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Editorial

Confessions of a CEO Prime Minister

Ahead of the budget session of Parliament, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had a televised meeting with some select editors of television channels. The Prime Minister had a simple explanation for all the problems facing the country: ‘compulsions of coalition politics’. And he had a simple suggestion: the media should not pay too much attention to the scams and other problems for it affects the ‘self-confidence of the people’ and the ‘international image of the country’!...Full text

Commentary

RSS Letter to PM : Desperate Bid to Save Face?

Manisha Sethi

As the spool of the Hindutva terror networks begins to unravel, and the question whether terror can be prefixed by ‘saffron’ or ‘Hindutva’ begins to be asked on television channels, RSS Chief Sarkaryavah Suresh (Bhayya) Joshi, has felt the necessity of writing a rather long letter to the Prime Minister.....Full text

Indian Skies up for Sale

P Gopal

This is an era of liberalized scams involving politician-bureaucrat-big business nexus in looting the national assets. The heat generated by 2G spectrum has not subsided. Now, CAG audit findings have revealed the corruption cloud over the Indian skies. The Union government on 17 February scrapped the controversial 2005 S-band allotment deal between Antrix, the commercial arm of ISRO, and Devas Multimedia, a private firm.....Full text

Justice Somasekhara Report :

[Between August and October 2008, BJP-ruled Karnataka witnessed over fifty attacks on Christian institutions across the state, with the attacks peaking around September 14-15 when simultaneous attacks took place at around 18 places in different districts. Having examined some 57 instances of attacks on Christian institutions in Karnataka in 2008, the Justice Somasekhara Commission submitted its final Report in January 2011. Liberation reads between the lines of the highlights/summary of the Report (the full Report is yet to be made public) released by the Commission.]

It is most striking that this summary Report does not tell us who actually was responsible for these attacks, which is what the Commission was set up to find out. But it goes out of its way to give a sweeping clean chit to the State Government, BJP and Sangh Parivar, concluding that “There is no basis to the apprehension of Christian petitioners that the politicians, BJP, mainstream Sangha Parivar and State Govt. directly or indirectly, are involved in the attacks.” Similar statements exonerating the ‘Govt/BJP/Sangh Parivar’ are sprinkled all over the Report, giving a strong sense of “protesting too much”.....Full text

Food Security for All :

Kavita Krishnan

The tussle between the National Advisory Council and the Expert Committee headed by the PM’s Economic Advisor C Rangarajan over the National Food Security Bill is being projected as a contest between the ‘pro-people concerns’ of the NAC headed by Sonia Gandhi, and the neoliberal commitments of Manmohan Singh on the other.....Full text

The Raymond Davis case:

Sukumar Murlidharan

The U.S. has committed several outright crimes in the course of its fancifully named “global war on terror”. These have invariably been embroidered and portrayed as accidental missteps that the morally righteous occasionally make. A vital safety valve has been the assurance that the government of Pakistan, its one indispensable and most conflicted ally in the enterprise, would willingly step up to accept responsibility for some of the imperial misdeeds of the U.S.....Full text

Campaign

Rulers Are Pushing the Country Deeper into Crisis,

Communists Must Lead the People out of this Crisis

(Comrade Dipankar’s address at the AILC Convention held in Kozhikode, Kerala on 22 January)

Comrades,
When we had assembled in Delhi to launch this All India Left Coordination, it was four days before the Independence Day of 2010. Today when we meet here in Kozhikode, it is incidentally again four days before another important National Day, the Republic Day of 2011. Between Independence Day of 2010 and Republic Day of 2011, which way has the country moved? Almost everybody would agree the country has moved deeper into crisis....Full text

Insight

Privatisation Has Paved the Way for Corruption

[Text of speech delivered by Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan at the Deshbhakt Yadgar Hall, Jalandhar, on ‘The Indian State and the Cancer of Corruption’ on 14 February.]

Corruption is corroding Indian democracy, and massive scams are being discovered all around. Corruption is commonly understood as bribe-taking, but that is not really the case. Rather, corruption in any instance in which a person in public office takes a decision, due to any factors, against impartial public interest....Full text

Cover Feature

Arab Uprising:
When Decades Happen in Weeks

- Dipankar Bhattacharya

There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen. Lenin said this nearly a hundred years ago during the turbulent days of Russian revolution. The last few weeks have once again vindicated this Leninist insight when the people of Tunisia and Egypt succeeded in ending decades of autocratic rule through weeks of massive street protests. It took the brave people of Tunisia just four weeks to not only end the 23-year-old autocratic rule of their notorious US-backed ruler, Ben Ali, but also inspire upsurges across the Arab world to put several other Ben Alis on notice....Full text

Feature

IWD Centenary
Violence Against Women :

Kavita Krishnan

On 8 March last year, the UPA-II had passed the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha with much fanfare. As the International Women’s Day Centenary culminating on 8 March 2011 nears, it is apparent that the Bill has been shelved. It may periodically be taken off the shelf and dusted off, but there is no sign that it will in fact be passed without significant dilutions....Full text

Neoliberalism,
‘Women’s Empowerment’ and Agricultural Labour*

Kalpna Wilson

any of the critical discussions taking place regarding neoliberalism in academic, activist and policy circles focus on the contrast between neoliberal policies and other ways of organizing capitalism – in particular, the models of  Keynesianism, and state led developmentalism -  which these policies have effectively dismantled. From this point of view, critiques of neoliberalism have tended to be essentially defensive in nature....Full text

Updates

Forest Dwellers Rally in Haldwani
On 2 February, villagers from the khattas (forest settlements) and forest dwellers of a large number of villages came together for a spirited rally at Haldwani....Full text

International

The Modern Occupation

Shashwat Sinha

[Continued from Liberation February 2011.] 

The history of inception of Israel can give further perspective to the current nature of the state of Israel. Israel started as a colonial project with political Zionism at its roots that took shape in the late-19th century Europe under Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian journalist. In 1896, Herzl published Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews), offering his vision of a future state; the following year he presided over the first World Zionist Congress......Full text

Cover

Rise against Soaring Prices and Rampant Corruption!
Rise against the
Corrupt, Repressive and Treacherous UPA Regime!!
Onward to Delhi,
Onward to the March 14 “People’s March to Parliament”!!!

Can you imagine a country where 77% people live on a daily budget of less than Rs. 20 while foodgrains rot in state custody and rising food prices subject more and more people to hunger and malnutrition?....Full text

In Solidarity with the anti-POSCO Resistance Struggle in Odisha

The Ministry of Environment and Forests has chosen to clear the notorious POSCO project in Odisha – in spite of the fact that three separate committees – the Saxena Committee, the POSCO Enquiry Committee and the Forest Advisory Committee – set up at the behest of the Ministry itself have testified to rampant and deliberate violations of the Forest Rights Act by the project.....Full text