December 2009

Has the Centre finally given in to the demand of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) for a separate Telangana State? The answer appeared to be ‘yes’ late last night when the Union Home Minister announced, after a series of parleys among the central leaders on the issue, that the process of forming the separate State would be shortly initiated by the adoption of an appropriate resolution in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly. That announcement resulted in TRS President K. Chandrashekhar Rao giving (…)

Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram has offered to have a quiet dialogue with all parties in Kashmir including who are demanding Azadi, Autonomy and Self-Rule, the three main categories in which the politics of the Valley is divided. But none has spelled out the broad outlines of the constitutional system within the State which would ensure the rights of the people if they succeed in their objective.
The votaries of restoration of the pre-1953 status for the State, for instance, when (…)

India and Russia value their regular annual summits as the principal vehicle to advance their strategic partnership in different directions. The agenda of regular Indo-Russian summits always cover bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual concern. The just concluded Indo-Russian summit at Moscow in this regard was no exception, and has no doubt pushed our strategic partnership to a new stage and provided a qualitatively new content to our time-tested relationship.
With (…)

The new Afghan strategy announced by United States President Barack Obama on December 1 is a game-changer in regional politics across a broad swathe of the international system. The reactions in capitals as far removed as Beijing, Tehran, New Delhi and Moscow amply bear this out.
Broadly speaking, just about everyone under-stands that the US surge of 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan is a passing necessity. It merely provides the gateway to an end-game strategy aimed at (…)

“In India the cultural imperialism of English had a very decisive impact on my life as English language is a status symbol and a gateway of social mobility. It is hard for those who are born in a family which does not promote or speak English language and does not have means to send their children to English medium schools. In India intelligence of a person is considered synonymous to speaking English with an Oxford accent, which means, those who do not speak English with a desirable accent (…)

Respected Sir,
On behalf of the Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sanghathan (BGPMUS) and the Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh Sahayog Samiti (BGPSSS), we, the undersigned, are baffled and shocked over the UPA and the Congress party’s silence regarding the 25th anniversary of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
We cannot help notice that your honourable self had led the nation in paying homage to the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on her 25th death anniversary. We gather from personal (…)

It was a massacre of innocents by all counts. What happened at the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal in the early morning of December 3 was not just a tragedy but a heinous crime which killed nearly two thousand and hospitalised many more, it brings out something much more ghastly than the hazards of modern industrialisation.
The enormity of the crime—unprecedented in our times—lies not merely in any negligence on the part of the workers and superintending staff behind the leakage of the (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Among the Prime Ministers of India, who was the most intellectually proficient? The temptation is to point to Jawaharlal Nehru, the Cantabrigian who conversed with Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein, who wrote classical books and masterpieces of English prose like the Tryst-with-destiny speech and the description of the Ganga in his last will and testament.
But, as in all human affairs, don’t glamour and charisma give an edge to Nehru’s appeal? By the same token, doesn’t (…)

President Obama’s foreign policy orientation towards East Asia seems to be characterised by continuity rather than change. Amidst much hype, Obama’s East Asia policy is not much different from his predecessors. However, one possible negative fall-out of such a policy can be that while paying more and more attention on the hotspots of the so-called war on terror, continuity of policies towards East Asia will shade into complacency, leaving the Administration to constantly making efforts to (…)

President Barack Obama became the first American President to pay a state visit to China while in his first year in office. China was the third stop during the latest trip of the President to four Asian states. He visited Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea. He started the tour by visiting Japan, the closest American ally in the region. But what turned out to be most significant was the President’s meeting with his Chinese counterpart. Considering that China is the rising power and the (…)