August 9, 2008

The all-party meeting called by the UPA Government to tackle the Jammu unrest and bridge the J&K divide was indeed overdue. While it is true that differences did surface between the BJP, which projected the feelings of the agitators in jammu demanding immediate restoration of forest land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB), and the PDP and NC, which highlighted the public sentiments in the Kashmir Valley, such divergences were quite natural in the circumstances as those mirrored the (…)

The whole drama of the confidence-seeking vote in Parliament on the nuclear deal reminded me of what transpired during the 2000 US Presidential election between Gore and Bush. During the counting, the votes cast in the State of Florida had assumed decisiveness for victory. Gore wanted all the votes to be recounted as a short sample had shown that many invalid votes had been counted in favour of Bush, and a total recount will put Gore, as the winner. Bush naturally opposed. The matter landed (…)

In the afternoon of August 1, 2008 passed away in NOIDA’s Metro Hospital, former CPM General Secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet, 92, after a prolonged illness. Since he relinquished the post of party General Secretary in 2005 he had been ailing and due to ill-health and advanced age could not meaningfully contribute towards shaping the course of as well as effectively intervene in the country’s political developments to the detriment of the nation and its people at large.
This is not (…)

The last four years have been years of great disappointment for the toiling millions of the country. These have been years showing the failure of the Central Government to fulfill the pledges given to the people. The policies pursued by the Central Government have been influenced by the dictates of the World Bank. Removal of the subsidies which were meant to help the producer and the consumer, invitation to multinationals in the name of technological advance and import liberalisation, (…)

On October 2, 2006, the thought of writing a novel based on the life of CPM stalwart Harkishan Singh Surjeet began to germinate in my mind. The idea took me to Surjeet’s residence where I sat with him and other members of his family in the verandah of his spacious Delhi home. We began talking over sips of oversweet tea. I told him that I was writing a novel set against the backdrop of the 2004 Lok Sabha elections in which he played a pivotal role, and I wanted him to help fill in the blanks. (…)

* Comrade Surjeet is no more. A flood of memories overwhelms me as I start to write this. I met him first in 1973, 35 years ago. His sharp and, at times, mischievous eyes, and the speed of his speech would often leave me and fellow comrades confused trying to decipher exactly what he had said. He was always quicksilver, thought on his feet, leaving his political adversaries at least two steps behind.
* When I came into the Central Committee in 1984 and started working for the party’s (…)

Document
[(On August 1, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee broke his silence on his expulsion from the CPI-M with a lengthy press statement. We are carrying here the text of that statement for the benefit of our readers. —Editor)]
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July 23, 2008 has been one of the saddest days of my life, when I was informed through the media of the summary expulsion from my membership of the CPI-M for “seriously compromising the position of the Party”. The expulsion has meant cessation of (…)

[(Communication)]
After the parliamentary session on the trust vote was over, Communist veterans in Kerala and West Bengal, who were thrown out of the party, raised the outcry against Somnath Chatterjee’s expulsion from the CPI-M that “there is no democracy in the CPI-M”. Their complaint is against the ‘centralised democracy’, in the communist jargon ‘democratic centralism’. The issue is not between centralised democracy versus non-centralised one as is still taken to be. Stalin, who is (…)

[(The issue of renegotiating the 123 Agreement between India and the US has come to the fore of late. We reproduce here the following article appearing in The Indian Express (July 22, 2008) and publish its rejoinder by a distinguished scientist. —Editor )]
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About the Indo-US nuclear deal, it is time to call a spade a spade—especially the assertions made by political parties and personnel from the Department of Atomic Energy, the IFS and others that the Indo-US (…)

The article by G. Balachandran in The Indian Express of July 22, 2008 entitled “Renegotiate What?” (in the 123 Agreement) is grossly inadequate, indeed dismissive. There are numerous Articles in the so-called Indo-US 123, “frozen” with effect from August 1, 2007, that require major re-negotiation. Here goes.
Firstly, Article 2.1 specifying that “Each Party … Respective national laws …”, is highly dangerous. That is why both the US-China and the US-Japan 123 are worded to contain the (…)