November 1, 2008

As we go to press, news has just come of fresh terror strikes—this time in Assam: nine synchronised, high-intensity blasts, all within a span of 30 minutes, this morning killed as many as 61 persons and injured over 350 others in crowded areas of four places (Guwahati, Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon and Barpeta). Judging from the scale and magnitude of the serial blasts, official sources suspect the hand of the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami (HuJI) in these explosions and they feel the (…)

Washington deliberately engineers “controlled conflicts” in Asia to justify US military presence in the region. The Bush Administration has wielded American military might to serve its foreign-policy objectives, one among them being US exploitation of natural resources of other states.
The present situation in Pakistan is the consequence of a well-crafted American design to weaken and split the country. President Pervez Musharraf sought to reduce Pakistan’s dependence on the US—that is (…)

The recent financial crisis initiated by the collapse of the 158-year-old giant US investment bank, Lehman Brothers, has completely shattered confidence in the global financial system. Joseph Stiglitz has stated categorically that the Bush Administration has lost the confidence of the American people, and so has Wall Street. He has also cogently summed up the root cause of the crisis:
The fundamental problem with the financial system is that there have been large losses. Loans were made to (…)

There is increasing disquiet in the international community about a probable air strike on Iran toward the end of this year. Speculation is growing in Russia and various other countries, including the USA, about an enhanced probability of such an act of aggression by either Israel or the USA taking off from Georgia.
Not surprisingly, the first official pronounce-ment on the line of these speculations has come from Russia, with a senior Russian diplomat recently mentioning Russian (…)

It is a win-win situation for Raj Thackeray. He must have desired to get arrested. That keeps him in the headlines and also steals the media limelight from his main rival, the Shiv Sena. To his followers, indeed to a large number of Marathi youth in Mumbai and Maharashtra, the arrest confers on him the status of a saviour. The more he is seen on the non-Marathi channels and among the Hindi-speaking political classes as a monster, the more he is perceived as a spokesperson by the angry and (…)

Recently on October 18, the Russian Information Centre in the Capital witnessed an interesting interaction of several leading Russian scholars with Indian journalists. The scholars, who were in India to attend a seminar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, spoke in general on the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as well as Indo-Russian relations. However, towards the end of the interaction there was a scintillating analysis of the internal situation in China by Academician (…)

The following is a press release of the Delhi Convention on the release of Abhay Sahu and other activists of the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti, issued by Prof Manoranjan Mohanty, B.D. Sharma, Dr Usha Ramanathan, Ashok Agarwal, Ravi Hemadri, Sumit Chakravartty.
Political parties and civil society groups, at a Convention organised in Delhi on October 24, expressed concern over the malafide arrest of Abhay Sahu and other activists of the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti and the increasing (…)

The Ministry of Finance is responsible for the administration of the finances of the Central Government. The Budget has become an important part of the general economic policy. If a government department makes serious mistakes in classification of expenditures or receipts, it may seriously distort in the budgetary allocations made by Parliament and affect the economic and financial matters of the country as a whole.
The government accounts are kept on cash basis and most of its (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS On November 3 this year falls Nikhil Chakravartty’s 95th birth anniversary. On this occasion we reproduce here one of his earliest writings, published under the pseudonym ‘Vanguard’ in The Calcutta Municipal Gazette (September 13, 1941) at the height of World War II. We also carry tributes to his abiding memory by V.R. Krishna Iyer, Muchkund Dubey and Madhu Dandavate following N.C.’s demise; these were published in this journal in July 1998. —Editor
__3__ It was a wet (…)

TRIBUTE
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! Dear Nikhil is dead. Is he? It is blaspheme to say he is dead. He dwells in the hearts of millions within Bharat and all over the globe. ‘Death, be not proud…for those whom thou think’st thou does overthrow, Die not, poor death, nor yet can’st thou kill them.’
I am in uncontrollable grief because I cannot accept Nikhil is no more. He has been everywhere, (…)