December 23, 2006

Minority rights have gained greater visibility and relevance all over the world. India is no exception to it being a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-linguistic and multi-cultural society. Diversity of all types is the very soul of India. It is in this context that minority rights have assumed added significance in post-independence India. When India attained independence after its division on religious lines, religious minorities became very apprehensive of their identity. According to (…)

Whoever rules Uttar Pradesh gets the passport to Delhi. This has long been the rule during the days of the Congress hegemony. Actually, Uttar Pradesh can claim to have reared as many as seven Prime Ministers: Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Charan Singh, Rajiv Gandhi, V.P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar. The only exceptions so far have been Morarji Desai and now Narasimha Rao.
What is more significant is that the political set-up in Uttar Pradesh, more than of any (…)

India’s majoritarian fascists, represented in Parliament by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are in a blue funk. The findings of the “Prime Ministers’ High Level Committee” (set up on March 9, 2005) headed by the former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Justice Rajindar Sachar, have in its Report submitted to Parliament on November 30, 2006 nailed the long-touted Right-wing disinformation about Indian Muslims as a skein of lies.
Drawing on every conceivable data source, (…)

The report of the High-Level Committee appointed by the Prime Minister under the chairmanship of Justice Rajindar Sachar, retired Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, to study the ‘Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India’, has been a subject of wide discussion in the press, among parliamentarians and other politicians as well as in other informed sections of the society.
The seven-member Committee had as its members eminent personalities like Sayid (…)

The parliamentary General Election in 1967 was contested by the non-Congress parties with limited electoral adjustments. Dr Lohia’s strategy of non-Congressism was more or less accepted in practice, if not in theory. After the election, Samyukta Vidhayak Dals (SVDs) formed their coalition governments in UP, Bihar, Haryana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK, having secured majority on its own, formed its single-party government, while in Kerala and West Bengal, the (…)

A rule of law means law enforcement but does not mean enforcement of a flawed law. That is where Parliament has an advantage over the Supreme Court. In reviewing enforcement it also debates the adequacy or inadequacy of the law. The Supreme Court reviews with its hands tied, only the law as it exists. The law becomes a blinker outside of which it cannot see. The Supreme Court can protect a static society, not a dynamic and changing society. It can play no part in promoting and protecting (…)

New Age has published a critical article from noted journalist Praful Bidwai regarding the CPM and CPI headlined “Tight-rope Walk with UPA”. It is a welcome feature that New Age allows such views to be published in its columns. If some other persons do so then the Communist leadership will come to know what others are thinking about them. It has become urgent to break out of the narrow circle of the communist movement. Bidwai thinks the CPM and CPI need serious introspection on their (…)

Dr Surendra J. Patel, who passed away in Geneva on December 15, 2006, was indeed one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. At a time when the so-called ‘globalisers’ are in full control of the international economic system, it is necessary to highlight the central message he conveyed in his Technological Transformation and Development in the South (co-edited by Professors Krishna Ahooja-Patel and Henry Voltmoyer), as spelt out in the Foreword of the book by Prof. Krishna (…)

Tribute
Dr Surendra J. Patel, an eminent Indian economist and a distinguished international civil servant, passed away in Geneva on December 15, 2006. After receiving his Ph.D degree in Economics from the prestigious Wharton School of Business in the United States, he taught Economics for a brief spell in a local college in Gujarat, his home State. He joined the United Nations service in 1950 and worked in various bodies in the UN Institute for Development Research where he completed his (…)

As Mainstream enters the fortyfifth year of its modest but purposeful existence one is gripped by a feeling of allround depression.
Today there is a UPA Government at the Centre and it is dependent on its very survival on the crucial support that the Left parties are rendering from outside. But this is being viewed by both the UPA constituents and the supporting parties as merely a matter of expediency. This is completely alien to the holistic vision that Mainstream had projected when (…)