Dangers at Kudankulam
The dangers present at Kudankulam, Idinthakarai and surrounding areas are several, but they can be separated into two categories, namely, dangers as seen by government and as seen by people. This is...
View ArticleBeyond Coalgate: End of Political Authority
A news item in The Times of India on August 23 had the heading: ‘Court says commercial activity seems to top Centre's priorities'. The item was on tourism in tiger reserves. It was published six days...
View ArticleFDI in Retail: A Low-down on the Falsehood over an Exclusionary Policy
Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of...
View ArticleMaharashtra Crisis in National Politics
While the UPA Government's Congress leadership, notably PM Manmohan Singh, remains firm on going ahead with his reforms agenda unveiled on September 14 with the decision to allow 51 per cent FDI in...
View ArticleTrauma of Former Terror Accused Set Free by Law Courts
MUSINGS More of those dark realities stumbling out from Modi administered Gujarat. Those encoun-ters and mass murders and detentions…the sheer brutality hits. And one is left wondering the impact of...
View ArticleThe Undemocratic Politics of Disruptions
As the monsoon session of Parliament comes to a close, a raging sense of democratic paralysis engulfs our democratic polity. The Parliament of India is a supreme body as a deliberative forum which...
View ArticleDisruption of Parliament: Threat to Democracy
Recent times have witnessed a strange and disturbing phenomenon in the Indian parlia-mentary system, that of continued disruption and disturbance of the proceedings of both Houses of Parliament. Every...
View ArticleCost and Benefit of Russia's Entry into WTO
by R.G. Gidadhubli In the third week of August 2012 the World Trade Organisation (WTO) admitted Russia as its 156th member. In fact the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, had added another feather on...
View ArticleThe Dark Side of India's ‘Growth' Narrative
BOOK REVIEW by Debraj Bhattacharya Alternative Economic Survey, India 2011, Economic Growth and Development in India: Deepening Divergence; Yuva Samvad Prakashan, New Delhi; 2012; Rs 225. This volume...
View ArticleThe Kinship of Impunity
A Supreme Court decision of September 26, 2012 was reported in the newspapers in a manner that suggested wishful thinking. Headlines are necessarily abbreviated, and those in this instance said that...
View ArticleIdentities are Returning with a Vengeance
“The most heinous and the most cruel crimes which history has recorded have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives.” So said Mahatma Gandhi in 1921 in an address to the...
View ArticleWe Are Back to the Numbers Game Again: Sonia – Mamata + Mayawati = Democracy
IMPRESSIONS We have had good governments and bad governments since independence. This is the first time we are having a government suspended in midair, unable to go up to heaven or come down to earth....
View ArticleQuestions of Freedom and People's Emancipation — III
Kobad Ghandy from Tihar Jail is writing on the concept of freedom vis-s-vis present-day society as also in relation to a future just order, bringing out some causes for the failure of the erstwhile...
View ArticleThe Imperial ‘Pivot' to Asia-Pacific and the New Cold War
The Pentagon document on Strategic Guid-ance, entitled “Sustaining Global Leadership: Priorities for Twenty First Century”, released in January 2012, has inaugurated a new cold war. If the theatre of...
View ArticleFace of the New World Order
From N.C.'s Writings Turmoil in heaven—the heaven which is presided over by the supreme superpower of the day, possessing History's largest number of deadly nuclear bombs and missiles, the Cruise to...
View ArticleFDI in Multi-Retail is Anti-Aam Aadmi
The following article, by a Congress leader, is being reproduced from Mainstream (May 26, 2012). Sam Walton, who created the largest and most powerful retail marketing organisation, died in 1992 as the...
View ArticleWar, Peace and Hegemony at the Beginning of the Twentyfirst Century
by Eric Hobsbawm Let me begin by thanking The Book Review Literary Trust for inviting me to enjoy the privilege, tonight, of giving this second lecture in memory of Nikhil Chakravartty. I have a small...
View ArticleTribute to Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm, 95, one of the greatest historians of the twentieth century, has passed into history. He breathed his last in London on Monday, October 1, 2012. When his historian colleague Victor...
View ArticleBehind Second Round of Big-ticket Reforms
The massive countrywide bandh of September 20 against the UPA Government's decisions to hike diesel prices, cut subsidy in cooking gas as well as introduce 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail and 49...
View ArticleYet Another Mega Scam
The nation was reeling under the impact of two mega scams—the Commonwealth Games scam and 2G spectrum scam—when it was struck by yet another scam now known as the ‘Coalgate' scam relating to the...
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