April 28, 2007

The battle cry of the Congress-I under Rajiv Gandhi has been sloganised. It is: Fight the Destabiliser.
In the two months of the tension-charged journey towards the declining credibility of the Congress-I leadership, all the complexities of the unfolding crisis has been beautifully simplified as just the mischievous handiwork of the accursed destabiliser. A massive thesis on destabilisation at work was laid thick by the Congress-I Working Committee meeting on April 18. As the follow-up of (…)

The rampage on Virginia Tech university campus reminds us of some pessimistic predictions about the future of modern society. Be it Peter Berger speaking of the ‘homeless mind’ or Habermas dwelling upon the ‘legitimation crisis’, a dark picture of the rational world occupies our imagination. We do not attach significance to anything other than the means-end calculation in such a world. Herbert Marcuse draws our attention to the ‘one-dimensional man’ entrenched in parochial instrumental (…)

Despite prolonged parleys between the PDP leaders with the senior national Congress leaders, Ministers of the Union Government and their interlocutors, the terms on which the final agreement was arrived at were so simple that they raised more questions than they answered. Were the differences between the major coalition partners in the government of Jammu and Kashmir on fundamental political principles and ideological or were they elementary and tactical? Were they due to lack of coalition (…)

1. Introduction
The Special Economic Zone (SEZ) policy has taken one more turn with the announcement from the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM). The freeze on them is being lifted but several parameters will be changed to accommodate the farmers, tribals and the civil society groups who have been agitating against the SEZs. From the earlier no limit on the maximum size of the multi-product SEZs now the limit has been set at 5000 hectares. The State governments are prohibited from (…)

The Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have received a lot of attention in the neo-liberal agenda for industrialisation and development. In India the issue has currently been a matter of public concern and intense debates, primarily on the question of land acquisition and the displacement of the agrarian community as results therefrom. We would like to draw attention in this note to one more aspect of the current SEZ policy in India which affects the status of labour employed within these (…)

While the UP Assembly elections are still on and the BSP, according to some projections, is surging ahead (whereas some others have forecast a significant improvement in the BJP’s poll performance), none has been able as yet to remove the prospects of the most important State in the Hindi heartland moving towards a hung Assembly. However, whatever the final outcome of these elections, once again the unquestionably communal agenda of the BJP and Sangh Parivar has come to the fore. With (…)

VOL XLV No 19 New Delhi April 28, 2007
Face of the Danger
– Editorial
SEZs: Modern Enclaves to Reward Capital by Exploiting Labour and Displacing Livelihoods in the Agrarian Economy
– Sunanda Sen and Byasdeb Dasgupta
SEZs : One More Anti-Bharat Act by India
– Arun Kumar
How to Run a Coalition Government in J&K
– Balraj Puri
Where ‘to kill’ is the Byword for Growth
– Dev N. Pathak
In Search of The Destabiliser
– FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS