November 18, 2006

The two-day Foreign Secretary-level talks have ended on a positive note. The two sides, as expected, have formally decided to set up a three-member-a-side anti-terror mechanism with Additional Secretaries in the two Foreign Offices in New Delhi and Islamabad heading the mechanism on behalf of the two countries.
The success of the talks in the Indian capital further lay in the detailed discussions that the Foreign Secretaries and their respective delegations conducted on various issues (…)

The following is a piece on one aspect of the India Social Forum. A detailed overview of the ISF 2006 will be publishd next week. —Editor
The five-day India Social Forum 2006 is over; the dust that swirled in the three crowded meeting grounds has settled into the trodden grass, and the calls for justice have quieted. The people who came in their tens of thousands to march, sing, shout, and confer have left for the countless villages and towns from which they make their way to Delhi.
But (…)

As the US Senate goes into the lame duck session, India’s chief concern is pitched on the outcome of “The United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006”. The results of the US mid-term elections have been decided overwhelmingly in favour of the Democrats. Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats have a more conservative opinion on the Indo-US civilian nuclear energy deal and propose to impose some killer amendments to the Bill that will be unacceptable to India. Given the (…)

From Mohammed Afzal to Santosh Kumar Singh—death sentence is becoming yet another routine event in our society. This is not surprising. From patriarchal domination to terrorist nightmare—we find ourselves amidst a culture in which rape, murder and mass killing have become all-pervasive. No wonder, all those who have suffered—those who have experienced the trauma, and lost their dear ones—strive for justice. Capital punishment, therefore, appears like a bold assertion: society would by no (…)

Technology-driven industrialisation has necessarily caused a shift in human values, certainly among those sections of society that have benefited from industrialisation in India . Such people speak and think about liberty and freedom without stopping to think whether there are others who cannot even dream of those desirable conditions of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The freedom they seek is to “consume” without the responsibility of leaving something for others, or (…)

I pledged to visit Singur on 27.10.2006. I am 81, going to be 82 on 14.01.2007. I thought I would not be able to make it. I had a premonition that I would fall seriously ill. But nothing happened. On my way back I was feeling younger. I am still feeling so. I keep well when I have the opportunity to move around with the people who work for their living in fields and pastures. It is a fact. I hope I would have the opportunity to move among them again and again.
Medha (Patkar) came. It (…)

The following pieces recently appeared in The Tribune. They are being combined and reproduced, with due acknowledgement, for the benefit of our readers. —Editor
Justice eludes Gang-rape Victims
Exactly a year has elapsed since the gruesome incident on October 15, 2005, when a daughter-mother duo was gang-raped amidst the frenzy of the Mau communal riots. Handing over the case to the CBI, the (…)

The concept of creamy layer was introduced by the Supreme Court in its judgment delivered in 1992, when it declared the amendment introduced by Parliament in the executive order issued by the National Front Government in 1990, as invalid. The amendment was made to help the poorer sections among the forward castes and some reservation was made for them. It also wanted to prioritise reservations among the other backward castes (OBCs) on an economic basis. The Court held that the Constitution (…)

Kocheril Raman Narayanan, the tenth President of India, passed away in New Delhi after a brief illness on November 9, 2005. While remembering him on his first death anniversary and as a token of our tribute to one of the most distinguished heads of state India has had, we are reproducing the speech he delivered at the banquet in honour of visiting US President Bill Clinton at Rashtrapati Bhavan on March 21, 2000. —Editor - -
It is with great (…)

My chief concern here is to understand the situation of Muslims in India. But, to the extent that the issue is inevitably affected by the condition of Muslims worldwide, it is relevant to take note of factors that impinge upon that condition even at the risk of enumerating a critique that is by now often made and well-recognised. The truth needs as much repeating as the lie, especially when the lie has the backing of international money and muscle.
First a word about the villainous (…)