September 6, 2008

While the stalemate in Singur in West Bengal’s Hooghly district continues and the Tatas have threatened to pull out the Nano car project from the State in case the situation does not improve and favourable conditions are not created for resumption of work at the automobile plant, the West Bengal Governor has taken the initiative to act as a facilitator in evolving a solution to the problem. This has been welcomed by all sides and the State Government’s past distrust of Gopalkrishna Gandhi is (…)

With the exit of President Pervez Musharraf from the political scene of Pakistan following his resignation in August 2008 we are reproducing N.C.’s memorable editorial, written precisely 20 years ago in August 1988, after the accidental death of President Zia-ul-Haq that month.
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With the passing away of President Zia-ul- Haq, Pakistan enters a new phase in its chequered political career. His death is also bound to bring about a significant shift in the mosaic of regional politics (…)

[(TRIBUTE
Distinguished Gandhian freedom fighter, erudite scholar, noted writer and columnist H.Y. Sharada Prasad, 84, who was the versatile Media Advisor to two Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, passed away in New Delhi at 1.30 pm on September 2, 2008 after a prolonged illness. He was suffering from Parkinson’s disease and also a terminal lung ailment and was bed-ridden for the past eight months after a fall. Unassuming and soft-spoken, he was one of the last links with the (…)

Even the cricket matches in Colombo didn’t wholly eclipse Narasimha Rao’s doings in Tiger-land this month as a weekend topic of conversation. Quite a number of people saw the direct telecast of his lecture to the Singapore Institute. More than the lecture, it is the question-and-answer session that followed which seems to have won approbation, especially the unfussy way in which the Prime Minister put the Pakistan High Commissioner in his place. That gentleman asked for it, by behaving more (…)

In coordination with its powerful patron, the USA, Australia is trying to undermine the processes underway in Asia that they view as ‘dangerous’. Canberra intends, in the first place, to minimise the significance of the ASEAN, AFR, ASEAN+3, EAS by describing these as mere “bricks” of a future Asia-Pacific Community (APC). At the same time by branding these mechanisms as “insufficient” and “inefficient”, the Australians and Americans are seeking to pursue the well-known policy of “devide et (…)

The following is the introductory chapter of the book, Towards a New Paradigm in Higher Education (Kalpaz Publications, Delhi, 2008), edited by the author. The book was reviewed by Dr R.M. Pal in the form of a Review Article in Mainstream (May 10, 2008).
“There is so much I don’t want to know. Wisdom puts a limit even to knowledge.” Nietzsche
In the year 1592, Francies Bacon, the well-known British thinker and essayist, declared: “I confess that I have taken all knowledge to be my (…)

The Kashmir situation has once again demonstrated that though there may be long periods of quiet and a temporary appearance of peace and normalcy, there is a boiling cauldron of discontent which will boil over from time to time and make everybody on both sides of the divide sit up and wonder how to go about it. It should be clear that more of the same things will not work. More of democracy or of more of development or more of repression by the security forces can no longer be solutions. I (…)

Singur is once again in the news. In this context we reproduce, with due acknowledgment, the following article published in Hindu Business Line (January 29, 2007) that gave a different dimension of the Singur problem barely highlighted, if at all, in the media.
Cultivated food is the most vital human survival necessity. Yet, the global scenario is indeed bleak. Food production has failed to keep pace with the burgeoning population! Even the ‘Save The Earth’ report for the Rio Summit (…)

It is now clear that the Left Front Government of West Bengal has come forward in support of the Tata project in Singur by sacrificing the interests of the peasants, bargardars (sharecroppers) and agricultural labourers. As a consequence of forcibly taking away their land the life and livelihood of these peasants, bargadars (sharecroppers) and agricultural labourers have been endangered. Cutting across all views people are saying this about the ‘transport policy’ of the government: in West (…)

It was January 10, 2007. Alongwith a band of activists and concerned citizens this writer travelled to Kamarkundu in West Bengal’s Hooghly district from the Howrah Station. The objective: to visit Singur and peacefully express solidarity with the people there engaged in a unique resistance to the State Government’s attempts to forcibly acquire their land and hand over to the Tatas for construction of a small car factory in order to produce automobiles worth Rs 1 lakh each.
One had been (…)