2010

Dr Kishore Singh (Ph.D in international law, Sorbonne, 1977) has been responsible for the Right to Education at UNESCO (1998-2009). He has been the Secretary of the Joint Expert Group, UNESCO (CR)/ECOSOC (CESCR) on the Monitoring of the Right to Education since its establishment in 2001, and has collaborated with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Geneva, and participated in the work of the United Nations human rights treaty bodies. He has also cooperated with (…)

by Gautam Navlakha
In order to understand the significance of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and our response we must understand the role of the armed forces of the Union in wars of suppression. Because, we tend to overlook the magnitude of experience of the war. And yet, whether we choose to ignore the war or to pay hypocritical obeisance to the victims of the war, it does not obviate the reality of the war.
It is my contention that our opposition to the AFSPA is not only because (…)

Dr Kishore Singh (Ph.D in international law, Sorbonne, 1977) has been responsible for the Right to Education at UNESCO (1998-2009). He has been the Secretary of the Joint Expert Group, UNESCO (CR)/ECOSOC (CESCR) on the Monitoring of the Right to Education since its establishment in 2001, and has collaborated with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Geneva, and participated in the work of the United Nations human rights treaty bodies. He has also cooperated with (…)

REMEMBERING MUMBAI 26/11
On the second anniversary of the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai we remember the martyrs of those refarious assaults and reproduce the following piece that appeared in Mainstream (December 6, 2008) since it embodied one of the rare voices of sanity raised in this country following the 60-hour trauma India’s
commercial capital had to experience from November 26 to 29, 2008.
Our dear brothers in Pakistan,
In the intense grief that I am in due to the mindless (…)

I would like to take forward the debate initiated by Sumanta Bannerjee’s letter to the national stage. Here I try to answer two basic questions:
1. Why is an alternative political party needed when so many political parties already exist?
2. What are the essential, non-negotiable characteristics of this alternative political party?
Let me take up the first question first A genuinely alternative political party is needed not only in India but in most democracies as the main political (…)

MEDIA In the wake of the Niira Radia tapes, now in circulation due to the publication of their operative parts in the Open Magazine and Outlook, a series of commentaries on the role of the media and today’s journalists have appeared in the print media. One of the sharpest critiques of that role has been published in the Pakistani publication, Dawn. In view of the importance of the subject being discussed we are reproducing it, with due acknowledgement, for the benefit of our readers. Jawed (…)

MEDIA
Journalism started going astray with the birth of financial dailies in the 1960s. With full-fledged newspapers devoted exclusively to business, corporate houses became hyperactive. The next thing we knew was press conferences ending with gifts of expensive sarees and suitlengths to reporters.
That was innocent child play compared to what has hit the headlines now—charges of celebrity journalists working hand in hand with a professional lobbyist to fix things like Cabinet (…)

While delivering the Victor Kiernan Memorial Lecture in Cambridge University on October 23, Mr Prakash Karat, General Secretary of the CPI-M, said: “Kiernan who lived in British India between 1938 and 1946 often criticised Communists for their lack of interest in theory.” Karat admitted this deficiency and quipped that the Left in India was still banking on the concepts and theories of the 1940s.
(New Indian Express, Thiruvananthapuram, October 24, 2010)
This author had ratiocinated that (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Firdaus Ahmed
Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II by Madhusree Mukerjee; Tranquebar Press, Chennai; 2010; pages 352; Rs 495.
India’s most widely read historian, Ram-chandra Guha, rightly praises Mukerjee’s book as ‘a major contribution to Indian history and to the history of the Second World War’. The author has convincingly laid the blame for the Bengal Famine 1943 and the resulting three million deaths at (…)

In the beginning, management education was concerned with industries and corporate bodies. Next, it was dominated by academicians and lastly it emphasised on customer satisfaction and business ethics. Corporate management has been primarily value creation. Managerial problems cannot be segregated under disciplinary boundaries. Politics can be found in all places including corporate management where inter-personal relations are involved. Decision-making by the corporate management is (…)