March 1, 2008

[(Fifteen years ago, in early 1993, following the Ayodhya crisis and Mumbai riots, artists and writers came under a serious threat from communal and divisive forces. In July that year, the Convention on Freedom of Expression was held in New Delhi. Suhas Borker, one of the Conveners of the 1993 Convention, has sent us these lines for publication in this journal. These lines were penned at that time as the Call to the Convention and sent to the creative community all over the country. The (…)

This week has witnessed several noteworthy developments on the domestic front. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, presenting his fifth and the UPA Government’s last full Budget, took some concrete steps towards helping the aam aadmi so that, to use his words, the latter too becomes a “part of the growth story” in the country—the farmers and salaried classes have been sought to be given assistance in terms of a Rs 60,000-crore waiver of loans for small and marginal farmers while the income tax (…)

The Union Budget 2008-09 has been greeted in the media as an election Budget, a farmer’s Budget and a common man’s Budget. This has strengthe-ned expectation that the Congress party may announce elections in the coming months and cash in on the favourable popular sentiment created by the Budget.
Please-all Budget
IT goes without saying that a Budget which plans to spend Rs 7,50,884 crores (roughly 14 per cent of the GDP at current prices) has the potential to give sops to all sections of (…)

Even a cursory glance at the Economic Survey 2007-08 is enough to convince that the process of replacing, nay ridiculing, Jawaharlal Nehru’s economic approach appears to be complete. Now, it is no longer Nehru’s but Milton Friedman’s approach that is informing the Congress-led UPA Government’s strategy of development and economic policies. This can be better understood in the light of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, and the former Chairman of the American (…)

After a long, dark night, there are signs of a new dawn over Pakistan. The overpowering interest and excitement over the recently-held general elections in that country—at many places taking the form of a veritable mass upsurge—demonstrated the clearest repudiation of the eleven-year-old military dictatorship which had actually come to power through a coup in the wake of the last general elections.
There have been many impediments in the process of the elections and there are undoubtedly (…)

During the freedom movement trade unions used to take up national issues as well. When the Simon Commission came, trade unions, at that time under the banner of the AITUC, which was then the only all-India trade union centre, joined the boycott of the Commission. Bombay workers too went on protest strike when Tilak was arrested and also when the imperialist war started. In textile mills when the running thread used to break, the practice was to join the broken thread with spit. Due to this (…)

[(This article reached us some time ago, but could not be used for unavoidable reasons. It is now being published as its contents have not yet lost their validity. —Editor)]
Jean Kirkpatrick, the former Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations, once gave a be-all and end-all definition of democratic practice in any godfearing and citizen-loving nation-state. She is known to have commented that, “Democratic elections are not merely symbolic....They are competitive, periodic, (…)

The forthcoming presidential elections in Russia in March 2008 have naturally cought the world’s attention. Scholars on Russia agree that Putin is going to shape the emerging political scenario, but there is divergence of views about the exact course his political career would take after March. There have been debates and discussions not about the result of the forthcoming elections which appears to be inevitable but rather on the future of Putin. Speculations range from whether he would (…)

The recent outbreak of bird-flu in West Bengal led to the culling of about 29 lakh birds. Before this the outbreak of bird-flue in Navapur, Maharashtra in February 2006 had also led to very large-scale culling of birds. This has raised a serious concern about the threat bird flu poses to the very survival of poultry based livelihoods as well as the ethical, health and environmental issues involved in such large-scale culling concentrated in a few days.
Why is it that poultry birds have (…)

The room in which I now live has a closed window, A window that I cannot open at will. The window’s covered with a heavy curtain that I cannot move at will. I live in a room now, Where I cannot open the door at will, cannot cross the threshold. I live in a room, where the only other living inhabitants are Two sickly lizards on the wall. No man or any creature resembling a man is a allowed here. I live in a room where I find it a great strain to breathe.
There’s no sound around, but for (…)