South Asia Citizens Web

sacw.net - May 2007
IN the heat and noise generated in the Karnataka legislature by the controversy over Infosys honorary chairman and chief mentor Narayan Murthy’s views on the national anthem, another equally significant and damaging event virtually passed unnoticed – the hurried passage of the amendments to the Panchayat Raj Act by both houses of the legislature. There was pandemonium in both houses when the legislature passed the bill. In the legislative assembly, the opposition staged (…)

The traditional Left is converging rapidly with the Right, and irrespective of their stated political colours, and all the major parties in the parliament are merging into a colourless homogeneous mass, and a common economic agenda. Isn’t it Lenin who had said somewhere that economics is nothing but concentrated politics. By that criterion, political parties are now almost identical in their ’concentrated politics’, their differences carefully restricted to political rhetoric to keep the show going. The result is mind boggling double talk. In so far as the traditional Left is concerned, first Singur and then Nandigram drove home the point that the left politicians think the same way as the ’dream team’ of economic policy makers at the centre, who live constantly on the oxygen provided to them by the World Bank, the IMF and the Asian Development Bank.

Nandigram is a culmination of the West Bengal CPI(M) buying the logic of neoliberal economic policies. An anguished supporter of the CPI(M) asks why the party leadership in the state cannot, even within the capitalist framework, show an alternative path to industrialisation for the rest of the country.

From: [http://antisuperstition.org/ >http://antisuperstition.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=124&Itemid=103]
(Excerpts from the speech of Mr. Sitaram Yechuri, a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India, Marxist, New Delhi on 11th October 2003 at Nigdi, Pune. Nigel J. Shaughnessy prepared the transcript)
“The idea of having or allowing astrology taught in educational institutions is a regressive one,” thundered Mr.Yechuri. He remembered Murli (…)

Nepal has just completed a turbulent year of attempted transition from a despotic monarchy to a democracy. How far has the Himalayan state advanced towards its goal after its glorious achievement of last April?