|
Sunday, 14 January 2007 |
|
Saswat Pattanayak Here is a classic case of manufactured consent.
News is agog that India will have its Harvard University in next two years. Even Forbes Magazine testifies to that. The corporate media hails a proposed university in India to be the greatest hope of reified vision where huge mass of people will be educated for betterment of India’s economy; and, its poor state Orissa’s. It is being hailed as the institute that’s receiving the single largest donation ever worldwide: $1 billion, and yes its going to be the university with largest real estate holdings ever. So welcome to capitalism that apparently does good, through capitalists that claim to be philanthropists of great cause.
Are there any protests against the university? Hardly any. Who would protest establishment of a first world standard university in a third world standard country? Instead, there is huge celebration of this proposal, of a one billion dollar charity. It’s a poor peoples’ world, and free money counts. The donor, Anil Agarwal is being hailed as a messiah of sort whose generosity is redefining cannons of capitalism. ‘Let them eat cake’ is after all being replaced by ‘Let us serve them’!
 Be first to comment this article |  Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Tuesday, 09 January 2007 |
|
The Bangladesh Experience
Anu Muhammad
Although national elections are taking place regularly since 1991, the democratic process in Bangladesh is still in a vulnerable state. This paper attempts to understand the nature of socio-economic development that has become dominant in the country and also to understand whether this has links with the fragility of the democratic process. It argues that the peripheral status of the country is very important to look at to find constraints to develop institutions that are essential to have a strong foundation of the democratic polity.
Comments (1) | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Sunday, 07 January 2007 |
|
CG
The Late Indira Gandhi started the venerable tradition in Indian politics of pointing to the external forces that were trying to destabilize India. The only way to remain coherent as India, it was claimed was to vote for the gai bachhda (the Cow and Calf election symbol) and leave the rest to Mrs Gandhi's wisdom. As the climax to the Singur controversy appears to be over, we can wait for the denouement, so we are beginning to hear voices now to wrap it all up. It appears that the CPIM is the only hope for the dalits and Muslims and anything that questions the manner in which the CPIM crafts its political and economic agendas and implements them is going to open the doors for the 'right' that is the BJP.Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Saturday, 06 January 2007 |
|
Saswat Pattanayak
One year ago, on January 2, 2006, I was in Orissa covering the most barbaric and shameful epoch in the aftermath of Kalinga Nagar incidents. 12 tribals were murdered by the Orissa state police, because they were protesting against the illegal, and inhuman encroachment of their sweet little homes by a profit-mongering private industry giant. As many as 13 industrial plants had been declared to be set up in Kalinga Nagar itself, resulting in evacuation of thousands of indigenous people from their own lands, sans adequate compensations, relocation benefits, education or healthcare assurances, let alone alternative residences. Countless people were left in the lurch because one private company got greedier and bought the conscience of few dozens of political opportunists. And when the people were told that their villages were going to be leveled --meaning, their carefully worshiped houses were to be razed off the grounds without seeking any of their approvals, some tribals thought they should protest.
Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Friday, 05 January 2007 |
Lalit Batra
"After two years of marriage, my farmer husband and I were on the verge of starvation in Bengal and left for Delhi to find work. My husband used to make murmura, whereas I worked in 5 kothis. We had no money at the time to educate our children, only our older son studied a little in Delhi. However, over the 25 years in Pushta, we were able to save up and make a house with 3 rooms. When finally we were able to afford food and water and a decent life, we were evicted and thrown to the margins of society. Our house was demolished only after a day's notice! The police notified us just the day before that the demolition would begin at 10 in the morning, which hardly gave us any time to empty our house of all the stuff. We lost our pucca house and belongings, all earned with our sweat and toil of 25 years." - Haleema, a 45-year old woman living in Bawana resettlement colony Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Sunday, 31 December 2006 |
|
Saswat Pattanayak
Call me superstitious, but somehow I always tend to hope for the maxim that speaks: All's well that ends well. And hence, certainly in the last week of this month, I had not imagined the year 2006 would leave such bitter memories behind.
It all started with one death: Gerald Ford's. And ended with one execution: Saddam Hussein's.
What has Ford got to do with Hussein? I would probably have not wondered aloud such an analogy on another occasion. After all, one was the celebrated president of world's oldest democracy, and the other was the disgraced president of a dictatorial regime.
Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Friday, 29 December 2006 |
|
Pratyush Chandra
The Singur events are signs of a crisis borne out of a disjuncture between the Left Front's pragmatic policies and the legacy of the movement and class interests that empowered it. For a long time, the open eruption of this crisis was evaded by the West Bengal government's success in convincing its mass base of its ability to manoeuvre state apparatuses for small, yet continuous gains. It justified all its limitations and inefficacy by condemning the faulty centre-state relationship and a larger conspiracy to destabilise limited reformist gains - for instance, those from reforms in the Bargadari system.
Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Wednesday, 27 December 2006 |
|
James Petras
"It's no great secret why the Jewish agencies continue to trumpet support for the discredited policies of this failed administration. They see defense of Israel as their number-one goal, trumping all other items on the agenda. That single-mindedness binds them ever closer to a White House that has made combating Islamic terrorism its signature campaign. The campaign's effects on the world have been catastrophic. But that is no concern of the Jewish agencies." - December 8, 2006 statement by JJ Goldberg, editor of Forward (the leading Jewish weekly in the United States)
Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Wednesday, 27 December 2006 |
|
By CG
Comrade Budhadeb Bhattacharjee is a man in a hurry - he has to undo the pyrrhic victory of the labor-peasant movement in West Bengal: capital flight. He thought he got it fixed when he had the party and the government machinery close in on Singur, to evict people, erect a barricade and encircle the site. A technique developed in the bygone labor militancy days - gherao (encirclement) came in handy even in distancing oneself from its fruit! Who knew! There was perhaps a fleeting smile on his face, a sigh of relief as now that the site is secured, it is only a political matter of dealing with the Banerjees, Patkars and Roys. But pesky Tapasi Malik came along to ruin it all. The teenage daughter of one of the evicted landless workers strayed into the site at night to relieve herself and ended up as a smoldering corpse in a pit, the stench waking up her folks. Any sensible woman would have known better than to venture into such territory so there must be an explanation - other than the unlikely fact that she was just a teenager who was not very sensible. With 14 per cent of all crime in India being rape or dowry related, Indian policemen do not need any lessons in creative writing. So the wheels of imagination began to spin: Tapasi had slipped out of her home for an illicit rendezvous with a jealous lover and pick your choice: 1) she committed suicide shortly after 2) the jealous lover along with his drunken friends raped and murdered her.
Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Wednesday, 27 December 2006 |
|
By Pothik Ghosh
I am afraid I am going to have to admit that I shall somewhat complicate this discussion. And I begin doing that by asking - would it suffice for the Indian Left - both its communist and non-communist variants alike - to protest against the current government proposal to bring in a broadcasting bill that seeks to limit the 'free' media's operations? If the intended broadcasting bill is an act of state censorship - which it most certainly is - would it do for the Indian Left to simply see it as such and resist it? In other words, shouldn''t we on the Left, before we take a definite political position against the proposal, understand the tension within a system of which both the government and the media are integral parts? Only when we are able to comprehend this systemic tension would our praxis become a really interventionist critique of the political economy of the mass media.Comments (1) | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Wednesday, 27 December 2006 |
|
By Priyanka Srivastava
The 1939 Hollywood film, Gunga Din, is based on a short poem by Rudyard Kipling, which was published in 1892. This poem narrates the story of a low-caste bhishti (water career), Gunga Din, who lost his life while fulfilling his duty of quenching the thirst of wounded soldiers in the British Indian Army. Producer RKO and director George Stevens of Hollywood made a swashbuckler, cinematic version of the poem. This high-adventure drama is located in the rugged region of the North-West Frontier Provinces (NWFP) of the late nineteenth century colonial India. The screen adaptation of Kipling's poem illustrates a breathtaking tale of three adventurous British Sergeants and their 'low witted' Indian water bearer's fight against a vicious gang of thugs, a supposedly religious cult of ritualistic stranglers in colonial India who worshiped the ferocious Hindu goddess, Kali. These three confident British officers are assigned the task of eliminating thugee in NWFP.
Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
