Founding Editor: Daya Varma (1929-2015)
Editors: Vinod Mubayi (New York) and Raza Mir (New Jersey).
Editorial Board: Ram Puniyani and Irfan Engineer (Mumbai); Pervez Hoodbhoy (Islamabad); Dolores Chew (Montreal); Vamsi Vakulabharanam (Amherst); Ajay Bhardwaj (Vancouver).
Circulation/website: Feroz Mehdi (On behalf of Alternatives, Montreal).
CORRUPTING POLITICS OF THE ANTI-CORRUPTION JAMBOREE
Daya Varma and Vinod Mubayi
Update added on August 27, 2011: As this issue of INSAF Bulletin was about to be circulated, news came that Parliament had caved in to the three main demands made by Anna Hazare’s team and he has now decided to give up his fast putting an end to the tamasha that had gripped urban India for the last month.. These three demands were: 1) Citizens Charter, 2) Lower bureaucracy to be brought under the ambit of the Lokpal, and 3) Establishment of a Lokayukta in the States. Only a few legislators, notably the irrepressible Lalu Yadav, protested this parliamentary maneuver of acceding to demands made by a self-styled “conscience” of the country and his team, who represent, at best, a section of the Indian middle-class. But the majority of the MPs, both in the government and the opposition, had already abdicated their constitutional responsibilities and prerogatives and were looking for any kind of exit from the situation of crisis created by Team Anna and magnified by the media that feeds off the same class that yesterday was proclaiming “mera bharat mahan” and is now clamoring to end corruption. It now remains to be seen how another giant bureaucracy constituting a parallel government armed with powers of investigation, trial, and punishment will somehow be able to curb corruption. Meanwhile, we believe that what we wrote on this issue just a day ago is still relevant to Team Anna’s crusade and the broader issue of corruption. Read more…
THE CHALLENGE OF ANNA HAZARE’S FAST
Vipin Tripathi
Corruption, black money, nepotism, police atrocities – all are bad for any society. They are rampant in India. But Hazare and Baba Ramdev, the self-declared saviors of India, have another agenda. The article by Tripathi suggests that their agenda might as well be to replace Manmohan Singh with Advani or Sushma Swaraj. Read more…
ANNA UPSURGE AND THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Ram Puniyani
Anna Hazare’s second fast (August 2011) in Delhi, demanding the acceptance of his teams’ draft for Janlokpal bill has raised many different debates about the nature of this upsurge and how the social action groups, engaged in the process of struggle for Human rights of different sections of society, should relate to such movements. Read more…
TIRED OF DEMOCRACY?
Gail Omvedt
Why are such masses of people (apparently: in our village some came out for a morcha organized by the Maharashtra Navnirman Samiti) following Anna Hazare, when it is now clear that his Lokpal is an authoritarian, centralized and undemocratically pushed proposal? Read more…
ANNAJI, PLEASE ASK YOUR SUPPORTERS TO NOT INTIMIDATE US
New Delhi: An Open Letter from law student Shehzad Poonawalla to anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare. The 24-year-old law student has urged Hazare to appeal to his supporters to not intimidate those whose views are different from him on Lokpal bill. He also urged him to break his fast as his supporters are fast turning into violent mobs. Read more…
DR. SWAMY, FRIENDS AND LIMITS OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
Ram Puniyani
It is not a very easy task to decide as to where the freedom of expression ends and Hate speech begins. A lot of perception about this depends on one’s convictions about the underlying ideologies which are being talked about. At another level how democratic space is subverted for anti democratic agenda is a serious issue. The challenge is to combat Hate ideologies and Hate Speech within the democratic system, to protect it from being subverted by sectarian ideologies in the name of democratic freedom. Read more…
LONDON RIOTS – IS MULTI-CULTURALISM DOOMED?
Asghar Ali Engineer
The riots in London and other cities of U.K. like Birmingham, Manchester, Leicester, Liverpool indicate end of multi-culturalism in the West. The horrible massacre in Norway last month also a pointer in that direction? We need to seriously analyze these events. When Asians and Africans from former colonies began to migrate to western countries the Europe began to be multi-racial and multi-cultural which was a new experience for people of the West. In other words they were now paying the price for their colonial policies the brunt of which so far was borne by colonized countries only. Read more…
UK IN DENIAL ON WHAT LED TO RIOTS, BUT IS INDIA LEARNING A LESSON?
John Dayal
Has India learnt any lessons from the recent riots that savaged the United Kingdom early in August? The British Government and its police seem to be in a state of denial of the root causes that led to the violence, but there are lessons in it for India, and for that matter, for its neighbours in south Asia which are, or will soon be, forced to think about the after-affects of an entirely unregulated march of global capital under the guise of liberal economic policies, and the refusal of the government to play its role as a nurturer and protector in a welfare state. With six thousand communal riots, and hundreds of other incidents of mass violence, India must do some thinking. It is important to look at the British riots. Read more…
SLAVERY IN THE ‘LAND OF THE PURE’: PAKISTAN’S TWO MILLION DALITS (Part Two)
Yoginder Sikand
In the previous part of this article I had summarized some of the findings of probably the first-ever in-depth study about Pakistan’s Dalits, the country’s most dispossessed and vulnerable religious minority. Zulfiqar Shah’s alarming report, titled ‘Long Behind Schedule: A Study on the Plight of Scheduled Caste Hindus in Pakistan’, strikingly summarizes the harrowing conditions of Hindu Dalits in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. If caste and religious prejudice account in large measure for their harrowing plight, Shah argues that the attitude of the Pakistani state towards the Dalits is no less responsible. Read more…
BHATTARAI ELECTED NEW NEPAL PM
(The Hindu, August 28, 2011)
Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai was on Sunday (August 28, 2011) elected Nepal’s new Prime Minister defeating his Nepali Congress rival R.C. Poudyal, with the Terai-based Madhesi alliance extending crucial support to the former rebel leader. Read more…
INDO-BANGLA JOINT RIVERS PANEL SET TO FIRM UP WATER-SHARING DEAL
(ACHA August 20, 2011)
The ministerial level Bangladesh-India Joint Rivers Commission is to meet in Dhaka on September 5 a day ahead of Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s trip to accord ‘political nod’ for signing agreements for sharing the waters of two rivers. Read more…
COVER- UP RENEWS CALL FOR CBI PROBE IN RIOTS CASES
Poornima Joshi (New Delhi)
The clandestine operation to use evidence in the Gujarat riot cases not to book the guilty but to help them frame their defence once again highlights the need for the appointment of an independent prosecuting agency such as the CBI. As IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt’s affidavit the Supreme court shows, the advocate general of Gujarat — Tushar Mehta — sent reports of the Special Investigation Team ( SIT) in the nine Gujarat riot cases to RSS ideologue S. Gurumurthy. Gurumurthy was, in turn, framing the BJP’s political strategy to counter public opinion against chief minister Narendra Modi and the state government. He was also helping the accused frame their defence. Read more…
PEOPLES’ HEALTH MOVEMENT IN INDIA: Looking Back at Dalli Rajahara – Achievements and Problems
Dr. Punyabrata Gun
Dr. Gun runs an exemplary clinic on the outskirts of Kolkata, accessible, modern and cheap. He represents one of the thousand of dedicated Indians who give hope for a bright future for the country. Here is a report of what happened to efforts of another dedicated Indian, Shankar Guha Niyogi, who was murdered in 1991. Read more…
INDIA’S POPULATION TO OVERTAKE CHINA BY 2020
Daya Varma
The July 29 issue of the journal Science produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science features various aspects of the world population. It contains a chapter “India’s demographic change: opportunities and challenges” by K.S. James of the Population Research Centre, Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. This article is primarily based on the five-page article (576-580) by James although it also contains some information from other articles in the same issue of Science. Read more…
INDIAN ARTISTS BOYCOTT SHOW AT TEL AVIV ART MUSEUM
Submitted by Nora (August 1,2011)
Indian artists, invited by the curators of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art to participate in an exhibition of work from India next Spring, have signed a public statement refusing the invitation in solidarity with the Palestinian-led call for boycott, divestment and sanctions. Read more…
BOOK REVIEW: CAPITALISM, DEMOCRACY AND MEDICINE
Mridula Ramanna
(Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XLVI No.31 July 30, 2011)
The Art and Science of Healing since Antiquity by Daya Ram Varma (USA: Xlibris Corporation), 2011; pp 413 (price not stated). [inserted: $23 paper back; $33 hard cover) Read more…
OBITUARY: THE HONOURABLE JOHN GILBERT “JACK” LAYTON (1950-2011)
Daya Varma
Jack Layton was the Leader of the Official Opposition in the current Canadian Parliament comprising of 308 members. He represented a Toronto constituency. In the May 2, 2011 parliamentary elections, Layton lead the New Democratic Party (NDP) to all time high 103 seats pushing the Canadian Liberal Party to third place and decimating Bloc Québécois, which won only four seats instead of the majority of seats in Quebec, as was the case in the past. Read more…
OBITUARY: R.S. RAO (1937-2011)
Gilbert Sebastian
Prof. R S Rao (74), retired professor from Sambalpur University, a long time intellectual of radical politics in India passed away on 17 June 2011 in New Delhi. He had suffered a stroke and was in the ventilator for around twenty days. The inevitability of death takes away from us his lively and jovial company and the sharp intellect combined with unswerving commitment to the cause of the common people. Read more…
OBITUARY: Dr. SHAKUNTALA NOWRY
Dolores Chew
We learned with sadness of the passing away of DR. Shakuntala Nowry on Thursday 29 July, 2011. Dr. Nowry was a founding member of the South Asian Women’s Community Centre (SAWCC) and our first president. Read more…
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