August 2, 2008

The frontpage headline in Hindustan Times (July 30, 2008)—“5 days/55 Bombs/ 3 Cities/ 53 Dead: When will it stop?”—pithily brings out the gravity of the problem. Terror has struck again. If the bombs employed in Bangalore were of low intensity, the ones used in Ahmedabad were definitely of higher intensity and their effects were also deadlier resulting in deaths of more than 50 while figure of the injured exceeded 150. However, the materials used in the Bangalore bombs were no less lethal: (…)

The end of the UPA-Left relations has been welcomed by trade and industry. And why should it not be? This government headed by Dr Manmohan Singh makes no secret of its neoliberalisation agenda. Even when there was an UPA-Left Coordination Committee and Dr Manmohan Singh and P. Chidambaram gave lip-service to the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP), they actually tried their best to push the agenda of the United States.
At one of the Coordination Committee meetings in 2005, I had (…)

The passage of the nuclear deal exposed some of our shortcomings in negotiating a mega event, arguably with transnational ramifications. It also demonstrated the transparency of a process of which little was left unseen or unsaid. The image- intensifier of the electronic medium may have even played the role of a catalyst for high-pitched performances before the camera. The “high bourgeois” press travelled a considerable distance towards meeting the definition. The term was coined by the (…)

We had pleaded last year that the Left parties should withdraw their support to the UPA, as soon as the UPA went ahead finalising the draft safeguards agreement with the IAEA without any consultation in the coordination committee of the Left and UPA, reneging on their commitment on this for the first time. But due to the difficulties that cropped up with the Nandigram fiasco, the CPM and the Left parties just postponed and delayed the issue for another day by prescribing an unrealistic (…)

The entire nation is grappling with inflation, corruption, incompetent governance, food shortage, and farmers’ suicides; half the children below 12 years do not have access to drinking water and schools. Ours is a nation where only two brothers could corner 30 per cent of the country’s wealth by all means, including evading tax openly by importing Pushpak Vimanas as birthday gifts, and go scot-free. We should be proud of such dynamic entrepreneurs! Ours is a country which on the Human (…)

The following is the last article written by N.C. to appear in Mainstream and it was published just three months before his death. We are reproducing it here in view of its relevance in the present situation.
Outgoing Prime Minister Inder Gujral can hardly take the credit for his quietude over the American response to the Iraq crisis.
The crisis in Iraq this time has not been of the horrendous type witnessed seven years ago. President Bush was very thorough in having the last fling of (…)

This article was written sometime back but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons. —Editor
The recent escalation in food prices is the latest calamity to hit the poor and marginalised communities in India. The price of food and other essentials has been rising for the last 12 weeks and the current inflation level is the highest witnessed since November 2004. Retail prices of some essential food commodities have seen a sharp increase. Retail prices of gram, sugar, mustard oil, (…)

The recent high speed continuation of the longstanding upward creep of the general price level has put to test several beliefs of the neo-liberal economists. They believe that with the state off-the-back of the market forces, the economy would get its prices right, that is, would have distortion- free prices reflecting the interplay of the market demand and supply forces. With right prices and unregulated free markets, the entrepreneurial energies would become active to generate such (…)

A.T. Babu was the leading light of the RMVAS [Rajya Madyapaana Virodhi Andolana Samithi or State Temperance (Anti-Liquor) Movement] in Bangalore, Karnataka, for nearly two decades. He was an ever-cheerful, dedicated and action-oriented voluntary social worker with Gandhian motives, opposing the establishment of bars and liquor vends near places of education and worship and in residential areas, and tirelessly agitating with both the government as well as the people for the correct (…)

Book Review
Indian Doctor in Jail: The Story of Binayak Sen—A Report to the Nation by Doctors in Defence of Dr Binayak Sen; Publishers: Doctors in Defence of Dr Binayak Sen, Promila & CoPublishers in association with Bibliophile South Asia, New Delhi and Chicago; pages 112; price : Rs 250.
Democracies are considered the world over as a superior form of polity when compared to authoritarian regimes due to their ability and confidence to face multiple and complex challenges (…)