Passionate About India

Very rarely, I do realise the significance to write frequently on a particular issue, until and unless it is of national importance and requires national attention! But then Dr Binayak Sen’s case is unique and hence I decided to write once again for him! It is no secret that Dr Binayak Sen has been deliberately made a victim of an archaic law! The way this law has been used to suppress the voice of Sen and that of his likes is what prompted me to write this particular editorial. It is a matter of utter shame that even today how we clutch to our colonial past and their discriminatory laws which were crafted to boot-lick a select few who ran the government. We all know that Dr Binayak Sen was arrested for the first time on May 14, 2007 on the charges of allegedly helping jailed Maoist Narayan Sanyal under the garb of providing medical aid. Not to forget that the entire series of his meetings with Sanyal was being supervised by the jail authorities themselves. Despite that, on December 24...

WE MUST STOP SELLING OURSELVES TO RECESSION-STRUCK WESTERN COUNTRIES WHO ARE IN SEARCH OF PROFITS FROM INDIA AND WE SHOULD STOP OUR QUEST FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY. BY ARINDAM CHAUDHURI I have heard that in African countries, hunters find it tough to catch monkeys and in order to do so successfully, they place a jar with a small opening filled with nuts near the trees. The jar is so designed that it allows a monkey’s hand to go inside, but once in, the monkey finds it difficult to take it out. Most of the time, the monkey stays there as it is unwilling to let go of the nuts. These peanuts which trap a monkey are actually unrealistic desires of this animal! This is what brings me to the point I want to write on. There is no secret that we evolved from apes and thus few actions of ours closely relate to similar behaviour. Our penchant for having nuclear energy is quite similar, wherein we have no idea where it is going to lead us to. And unfortunately, right now we are unable to see beyond the ...

I have often said that we are a strange economy wherein the number of billionaires is increasing by the day, but we hardly have any worthwhile billion dollar global product. And this weird, inexplicable phenomenon – where billions are being made without having commensurate global products – is only prevalent in India. One wonders how these billionaires manage to make their billions without a supporting product? Well, of all the inexplicable means that are being adopted, one of the most fashionable has been the act of blatant land grabbing! In fact, land acquisition in India has been always the most ignored legislation, and obviously for understandable reasons! Not even three months have passed and 2011 has already seen its share of illegal transactions of land meant for public purposes. Among these innumerable and mostly untraceable public land deals, there are three deals that caught my fancy mostly due to the sheer nature of the deals! The first one being that of the Tamil Nadu gover...

At a point in time where not just India, but the entire world is grappling with the issue of food shortage and escalating food prices, especially owing to the worst drought that has recently hit China (affecting eight major wheat-growing provinces that account for around 80 per cent of the country’s total wheat output), and at a point in time wherein black money and corruption have taken up gigantic proportions, the least that was expected of our honourable Finance Minister was a few bold steps to arrest both the issues. To tackle the impending food crisis, most governments across the world are planning and drafting policies to control the expected food shortage and the anticipated food price hike. West Asian countries are stocking up grains, while countries like Iraq have already placed orders for 400,000 tonnes of wheat grain from the US. Following the trend, even Jordan, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia are exporting grains and Russia has even announced a complete ban on f...