October 2009

The one-day trilateral summit of the Foreign Ministers of Russia, India and China (RIC) successfully concluded in Bengaluru on October 27 with the joint communiqué issued at the end of the meet (their ninth) highlighting the need to coordinate their approaches to several major problems before the world today. These included terrorism, climate change and reform of financial institutions, issues on which their common positions came out in bold relief alongside the question of resolving (…)

October 31 marks the twentyfifth anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s martyrdom. On this occasion we are carrying the following piece by the former External Affairs Minister who had worked under her for several years and seen her from close quarters. We are also reproducing (on p. 27) N.C.’s article on her after her demise.
From May 1966 to April 1971 I was working in the Prime Minister’s Secretariat (it was renamed Prime Minister’s Office by Morarji Desai). I was the first foreign service (…)

The detention-cum-interrogation of the two young Kashmiri cricketers by the Bangalore Police is yet another of those ongoing instances of bias and insensitivity. How easy it is for the police to arrest Kashmiri Muslims! The ground-work is well prepared along that typical mindset-cum-format of Muslims being potential terrorists and the situation gets compounded if the word ‘Kashmiri’ is prefixed. And let’s not fool ourselves that this latest incident, involving the two Kashmiri cricketers, (…)

On November 3, 2009 N.C. would have completed 96 years had he been alive. On the occasion of his ninetyseventh birthday we reproduce what a former PM and a veteran journalist (both of whom are no longer in our midst) wrote about him after he passed away on June 27, 1998.
Former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao was to have released the book India-Pakistan: Themes Beyond Borders—Selections from Nikhil Chakravartty’s Writings (published by Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd.) at the meeting held (…)

When I first came to work in Delhi the most respected journalistic figure here was Sir Usha Nath Sen, one of the founders of the Associated Press of India which eventually became the PTI (Press Trust of India). Sir U.N. once told me of his guru K.C. Roy, the real founder of the API, that in any matter concerning the Government of India, in Delhi or Simla, K.C. Roy could figure out exactly with whom the matter rested and who would take the decision.
Delhi has grown exponentially since (…)

COMMUNICATION
I am grateful to you for publishing my piece “Unfinished Agenda of Gandhi’s Gram Swaraj: Fifty Years of Panchayati Raj” (Mainstream, October 10, 2009). But in this context I must bring to your kind notice a serious lapse that I have inadvertently committed due to the hurry in sending the piece to you for ensuring its publication in the Gandhi Anniversary Issue. It is the omission of the following reference:
Partha Nath Mukherji, ‘Participatory Democratisation: (…)

Mukesh Ambani’s salary is Rs 44.2 crores a year, about three-and-a-half crores a month. In a country where the poor outnumber the well-to-do, that seems vulgar. On the other hand, the big salary works out to 0.23 per cent of the Ambani companies’ net profits. That doesn’t look vulgar.
Sun TV’s Kalanithi Maran and wife Kavery take a salary of Rs 37.08 crores each. That works out to 16.96 per cent of their net profits. Is that vulgar? Anil Ambani’s salary is Rs 30.02 crores a year, or (…)

The political, social and administrative discourse on Naxalism, India’s hydra-headed ‘nowhere revolution’1 , that in the past five years has spread from ten States to twenty, from 168 districts to 223 (out of about 626) and 2000 police stations, is turning queer. With both the Indian state and the Maoists flexing their muscles and daring each other with their might, the space for sane speaking, dialogue and solution, if at all there was ever, appears invisible. An attack on intellectual (…)

Very recently, our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated once again that the Maoists pose the greatest internal security threat to the country. The Central Government is going to launch the biggest-ever operation against the Maoists, Operation Green Hunt, devised by the Home Ministry. The operation will be launched by some 70,000 paramilitary forces in 11 strategic districts along the borders of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand in addition to simultaneous operations through the dense forests in (…)

The latest round of agrarian violence reported from Khagaria district’s Icharwa char under Alauli Police Station1 of Bihar, disturbing though it is, it seems, is a powerful attempt by the weakest to ultimately defend themselves by the last option open and/or available to them. The char land in the riverine has resulted in bloodshed: 16 deaths of backward caste members including children. The attackers were Musahars, Bihar’s most illiterate and deprived caste accounting for a two million (…)