South Asia Citizens Web

It is heartening to witness an element of angry vigor emanating from Sri Lanka’s legal profession against the pending impeachment of the country’s Chief Justice. The resolutions issued by the general membership of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka yesterday expressing concern over the impeachment and the indignation displayed by provincial Bar Associations show that decency and sanity is not yet lost in the country.

Iqbal Haider the distinguished Pakistani democrat who campaigned for peace, human rights and secularism, died on 11 November 2012 in a Karachi. In the past few years Iqbal Haider lobbied the governments of India and Pakistan to address human rights of prisoners jailed in the each other’s country.

It used to be believed that that economic interaction between developing countries (South-South integration) would necessarily be more beneficial than North-South links. The latter were seen as reproducing the global division of labour that emerged by the mid 20thcentury, whereby much of the developing world essentially specialized in primary commodities and labour-intensive (and therefore lower productivity) manufactured goods, while the North kept the monopoly of high value added production. By contrast, trade and investment links between countries in the Global South were supposed to allow for more diversification because of their more similar stages of development, thus creating more synergies.

Only our two countries, China and India, are going for major expansion of nuclear power with no concrete plans to decommission the plants or to store and safeguard the nuclear waste. Both our countries also go for major nuclear arms build-up which is not in the best interests of our peoples, regional harmony and world peace. In the larger interests of our own countries and peoples and the whole world, please make a solemn resolve in your historic 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China not to promote nuclear energy in China. Such a thoughtful decision will also help India, Pakistan and other countries shun nuclear power and go for “New Energies.”

Dr Binayak Sen, an internationally renowned medical practitioner and social activist (a leading figure in the People’s Union for Civil Liberties), was incarcerated in Chhattisgarh and held in detention in Raipur having been branded as a Maoist for his activities in defence of poor tribals in the State. He is now out on bail. The following is the text of the Arvind Narayan Das Memorial Lecture he delivered in New Delhi on October 6, 2012.