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Editorial |
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Onward to a More Determined Assault on the Citadels of Corruption and Corporate Plunder
The indefinite fast launched by Anna Hazare on April 5 demanding a Jan Lokpal Bill (JLB) has ended in an initial victory. The fast has been withdrawn after 98 hours following an agreement between the UPA government and some leading JLB campaigners. A 10-member drafting committee has been constituted with as many members from the government side as from the JLB campaign. The draft of the Bill will presumably be ready by June 30 and Anna Hazare says he would like to see the legislation become effective by August 15. This is surely an encouraging moment for the anti-corruption movement in the country....Full text
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Commentary |
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Heed the Warning from Japan : Scrap Jaitapur Nuke Project
Radhika Krishnan
Just over than a month since the partial meltdown of the Fukoshima nuclear reactor, Japan is still coping with this disaster, which scientists have officially termed ‘at par’ with the explosion and meltdown that happened in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. The full impacts of this catastrophe are yet to reveal themselves. The tragedy has intensified the resolve of the people of Ratnagiri on the Konkan coast of Maharashtra not to allow the proposed Jaitapur nuclear power plant to come up.....Full text
Binayak Gets Bail - When Will All our Binayaks Get Justice?
Dipankar Bhattacharya
Dr. Binayak Sen has finally got bail following a favourable directive from the Supreme Court. In granting him bail, the apex court has also questioned the flimsy basis on which the Chhattisgarh government has charged him with sedition. The judges, Justice Harjit Singh Bedi and Justice Chandramauli Kumar Prasad, are reported to have said that Binayak may well be a Maoist sympathizer but that does not automatically attract charges of sedition.....Full text
Wikileaks – Exposing Imperialism and Its Agents
Kavita Krishnan
The US diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks continue to shine the spotlight on an area where murky darkness prevailed before – the precise nature of the intimacies between US imperialism and India’s ruling class and government.....Full text
Poll Promises
Mixer-Grinder in Tamil Nadu, Switzerland-London in West Bengal!
Election time is manifesto time. On the eve of elections we are used to the spectacle of ruling parties releasing eye-catching manifestos with spectacular promises. Former Haryana Chief Minister Chaudhary Devi Lal had once famously said that all manifestos read alike, the difference lying only in cover pages showing the names and election symbols of respective parties.....Full text
Census 2011: False Alarms and Real Challenges
DB
The provisional figures of the 2011 census, released on March 31, raise several questions while demolishing several population-related myths. With a total population of 1.21 billion, India has now inched closer to China, the most populous country in the world. According to current projections, India may well surpass China by 2025.....Full text
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Cover Feature |
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New Awakening and Confidence in
the Battle against Corruption
Kavita Krishnan
Is it a threat to democracy and democratic process for people, through democratic protests, to demand a say in what kind of law a Government introduces? Many critics of the anti-corruption movement that emerged around the fast by Anna Hazare on the Lokpal Bill issue seem to believe so....Full text
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Feature |
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CPI(ML) Election Campaign
West Bengal: For a Resurrection of the Fighting Left
The CPI(ML) is contesting in 37 Assembly constituencies spread over 13 Districts in West Bengal, elections for which are going to be held in six phases starting from 18th April and ending on 10th May. Nine of these 37 seats are in the North Bengal districts where election will be held on 18 April....Full text
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Article |
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Legacy of Rabindranath :
Discard the Dead, Uphold the Living
[On the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Thakur (May 8, 1861 -- August 7, 1941) Liberation pays tribute to the great Indian internationalist and humanist. Here we bring you the first part of a three-part article in which Arindam Sen tries to understand the poet's political personality as revealed in his works and in his actual role at important junctures in national and international politics.]
"The wheels of Fate will someday compel the English to give up their Indian empire. But what kind of India will they leave behind, what stark misery? When the stream of their centuries-old administration runs dry at last, what a waste of mud and filth they will leave behind them! I had at one time believed that the springs of civilization would issue out of the heart of Europe. But today when I am about to quit the world that faith has gone bankrupt altogether.....Full text
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Updates |
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Third Odisha Party Conference at Bhubaneswar
The Third Odisha Party Conference was held at Nagbhushan Bhavan, Bhubaneswar, on 2-3 April 2011. The Conference began on 2 April with the hoisting of the red flag outside the Conference Hall by Party Politburo member Comrade Swadesh Bhattacharya. Tributes were then paid to the martyrs' memorial and two minutes silence observed for departed comrades....Full text
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International |
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The Revolution Cannot Be Rolled Back
(The Egyptian people are refusing to leave Tahrir Square. They keep coming back, to demand a say in the shape of things to come; to demand punishment for Mubarak and the confiscation of the public money stolen by him; to protest against the bans on strikes imposed by the military. Below, we carry an abridged version of a report on the workers’ struggle in Egypt today, by Carl Finamore, a US Labour activist who has made a short video on labour’s role in the Egyptian revolution
[Untold Story of the Egyptian Revolution, which can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frtpwNYc980]).....Full text
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Obituary |
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The Hero of Naxalbari Peasant Upsurge Com. Manilal Singha is No More
Com. Manilal Singha, veteran of the Naxalbari Movement, passed away at North Bengal Medical College and Hospital on 10 February 2011, after sustaining a massive heart attack at his native village Telengagachh in Darjeeling district. He was 86. He is survived by his two sons.....Full text
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Cover |
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Free my feet from the shackles
Free my feet from the shackles
Like bangles made of thorn
Confined inside a narrow room
My fault lies in
Being incarnated as a bird.
Poem by Irom Sharmila,
translated from Manipuri to English
by Wide Angle Social Development Organisation....Full text
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