South Asia Citizens Web

Electoral sytem in India needs to slowly switch over to Proportionate Electorate System (PES) which could provide us a truly representative character of democracy.

The time has come for India to be bolder and more confident on human rights at the international level. Its growing stature in international affairs demands this leadership position. The current session of the UN Human Rights Council presents India with an excellent opportunity to move towards a foreign policy that truly befits the world’s largest democracy. It should seize the opportunity and vote in favour of accountability in Sri Lanka.

The Indian Embassy in Japan has denied visa to Maya Kobayashi, a resident of Fukushima in Japan. World’s first multiple reactor core-failure happened in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plants on March 11 last year. Greenpeace India had invited Ms. Kobayashi to share her experience with Indian people, particularly the communities in areas where new reactors are being set up.

The platinum jubilee of Bhonsala Military School, which was founded in 1937 by the Hindu Mahasabha leader Dr B S Moonje who also happened to be founder member of RSS, present before us a similar occasion.Apart from the fact that it has of late found itself on the wrong side of law, where its premises have been used to hold training camps of Hindutva terrorists or the likes of Lt Col Purohit, getting initial exposure to the sectarian agenda here, or its officials being taken to Bombay for interrogation by the anti-terrorist squad, a close look at the goings on in the institute, the work of indoctrination packaged as education, its vision of ’regenerating India’ makes it amply clear that the seven plus decadal journey of the institution, has made no difference to its core weltanshauung.

War, conflict and peace are states which cannot be abruptly demarcated. War creates its own vestiges and the creation of a war economy is one of them; it helps to sustain conflicts since certain powerful vested interest groups are created by it. More than two decades of insurgency, which followed Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assassination on August 15, 1975 and continued till the signing of the peace accord on December 2, 1997, has led to the creation of a vested interest group in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
The region has allegedly become a conduit point for small arms and drugs. Jummas (hill people) allege that Bengali security personnel along with civil officials were involved in the extraction of forest resources. The military officials however, deny the involvement of the military in such activities, but concede that a certain degree of pilferage of resources might have taken place.