August 30, 2008

With the resignation of Pervez Musharraf as the head of state there was a new opportunity in Pakistan to strengthen its democratic institutions in order to prevent any re-emergence of military rule through conspiracies and coup d’etats. The widspread jubilation among the public at large on the streets after Musharraf’s exit was a transparent testimony to the democratic aspirations of the people that Musharraf, the autocrat had failed to smother. It is at that very moment that cracks appeared (…)

William Hazlitt, one of the greatest English prose writers, once wrote: “If your enemies can’t find a flaw in your reasoning, they will quickly find one in your reputation.” The Georgian forces’ assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, masterminded by the melodramatic President, Mikheil Saakashvili, took everyone, including Russia and the West, by surprise. On hindsight, it appears the military misadventure was intended to frame Russia as an aggressor through lies and deception (…)

Our season of troubles seem to have started again. The first was over the trust vote against the UPA Government.There was hardly a need for a trust vote but for the impetuosity of the Central Government or, more precisely, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and the matching obduracy of the CPM leadership led by Comrade Prakash Karat.
The PM seemed in a frantic hurry to strike the nuclear deal while Bush was still the President of the US. Normally countries avoid making a deal with an (…)

When Jyoti Basu was sworn in as the Chief Minister of the first Left Front Government in West Bengal on June 21, 1977, one of the many “solemn pledges” that he and his senior Minister, Krishnapada Ghosh, made to the mammoth gathering that had assembled before Writers’ Buildings, which spilled over to the neighbouring streets, was that his credo was that his Ministry would “never betray the interest of the State’s small and marginal farmers and landless agricultural labourers”. He was candid (…)

Kashmir today has become the touchstone of Indian statesmanship. The crisis that has emerged there can no longer be managed by conventional methods of settling political acrimony. It has gone much beyond, and now it has assumed the magnitude of a definite threat to the integrity of the country. The militants who want Kashmir to secede from the Indian Union are today in control of life and politics—at least in the Valley itself. It is time the public in this country was informed about the (…)

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark; O cursed spite That ever I was born to set it right. (Hamlet)
In an act of conspicuous courage (some might say ‘audacity’) the young, bright, and fiercely upright Omar Abdullah has breached the pall of silence in which the Valley has remained suffocated since the coerced exodus of the Pandits in 1990.
In a statement recorded on his blog, Omar has made the following candid aversions that interrogate Kashmiri Muslims as a whole:
”It is so (…)

The crucial two-day meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on August 21-22 to grant unconditional waiver to India to engage in global civilian nuclear commerce ended inconclusively. The draft waiver circulated by the United States after intense negotiations with India was not acceptable to the certain members of the NSG. The positive aspect of the whole deliberations is that the reservationists did not outrightly oppose India’s bid to join the international community in civilian (…)

It is now bonanza time for political ‘pundits’, time for them to editorialise and pontificate on the political shape our country is likely to witness in the aftermath of the UPA Government’s handsome win in the Lok Sabha over the issue of the nuclear agreement with the US. As expected, most of them are prepared to sail in the same boat with the Prime Minister with one ‘pundit’, who had left his position of Assistant Editor in a leading Kolkata-based English daily, joined another so-called (…)

It has been widely reported that there has been an increase in the incidents of atrocities on Dalits in Haryana over the years. This is evident from the media coverage of the happenings at Jhajjar, Dulina (Sonipat), Harsola (Kaithal), Gohana (Sonipat) and Salwan (Karnal) Therefore, it becomes essential to trace the factors behind the rise of this ugly phenomenon. It is equally important to suggest the ways and means for controlling such attacks.
These have to be ascribed to factors such (…)