The ongoing fast unto death by respected social activist Anna Hazare has evoked popular support and wide spread coverage in the media. It is clear that the popular support especially from the urban middle classes is built more on the outrage over corruption than a deeper understanding of the issues involved in Anna’s campaign for the Jan Lokpal Bill.
The Commonwealth Games 2010 has become one of the biggest scandals in the country which involves governments both in Delhi and the Centre. Roshan Kishore writes.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” - Joseph Goebbels (Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945).
The Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill has been tabled in the Parliament. The new bill allows for setting up of off-shore campuses for educational institutions, which would be given complete freedom to determine fee structure and admission criteria. The Bill draws from policy prescriptions that were enunciated in a Commerce Ministry consultation note in the first UPA government in 2005, and the rationale underlying the bill reflects the government’s continued subscription to the neoliberal ideology. The emphasis in the Bill pertains toward rampant commercialization of the higher education sector, a process which could have far reaching and unhealthy consequences for the sector. This note highlights the problems with the Bill and why it is needed to oppose its introduction in Parliament.
With our beloved JB breathing his last it is definitely the end of an era. It is even difficult to imagine someone being a person to reckon with politically after having spent almost seven decades in active politics from the freedom struggle till his last days. Condolences and respects are flowing in from all political quarters. Come Tuesday and the people of Bengal will march with their own Jyoti Babu for the last time. How should we as communists react to this historic moment in time?
A wide debate has started after Barrack Obama has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for peace. With Obama himself calling it unexpected and acting humble, sentiments have gone from calling it a farce to a recognition which was not deserved to putting the cart before the horse (where it is not Obama delivering on his promises which earned him the Nobel but the Nobel would play in his mind when he still has a long tenure in the Oval Office).
The mass murder of CPI (M) supporters and activists in the Lalgarh area of West Midnapore district of West Bengal has evoked strong responses from several quarters. In the reign of terror that has been unleashed, 8 CPI (M) workers and supporters have been confirmed as killed. The actual number of dead according to local party sources is much more than that. Several party workers have been kidnapped by the armed Maoists, the possibility of whose being still alive is low,writes Roshan Kishore.
A lot has been and is being written about the current economic crisis which is staring world capitalism in its face. As the figures for estimated losses and number of unemployed are rising, the realization that this is a crises at par with if not bigger than the great depression of the 1930s is slowly setting in. What needs to be done to pull the world economy out of this downturn has become the most important question at the current conjuncture. It is in this regard that an understanding of what are the roots of this crisis is an extremely important issue. This is so because, without a correct diagnosis of the factors which are responsible, appropriate measures for ensuring a recovery from this downturn would remain elusive,writes Roshan Kishore, Ph D scholar, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, JNU.