Finally the decision to merge the Janata party, the Lok Dal, the Congress (S) and the Jan Morcha has been announced by V.P. Singh. The details regarding the proposed Samajwadi Janata Dal’s programme and leadership are to be finalised by August 15. The Haryana chief minister, Devi Lal, has been … Read More
I find it truly extraordinary that in the billions of words that have been written on various facets of the British Raj in India, it is difficult to find even a casual reference to its impact on the Chaturvarna (the four order) system which is central to the Hindu order. … Read More
It is a welcome development that a number of Congress MPs have written to the Prime Minister apparently expressing concern over the state of the party for which he, as the leader, cannot avoid responsibility. The discontent is not new. It was quite palpable in the summer of 1987, when … Read More
Since the political discourse has been thoroughly personalised, it is not easy to turn the focus back to concrete realities on the ground. But it is precisely because politics at the national level has come to be seen as if it were a one-to-one combat between Mr Rajiv Gandhi and … Read More
It is not particularly surprising that Iran has finally accepted the UN security council resolution of July 20, 1987, calling for a ceasefire in the nearly eight-year-old war between it and Iraq. Broadly speaking, three factors account for the change in Iran’s stand. Since last April, the war on the … Read More
Suddenly, there has been a spate of reports in western newspapers to the effect that there is widespread concern in the Far East and South-East Asia over the possible re-emergence of Japan as a great military power. Apparently, there is some substance in these reports. The head of the Japanese … Read More
It is not an arguable proposition that former Congressmen wanting to return to the fold – Mr Pranab Mukherjee and Mr Shyama Charan Shukla, for instance – should be allowed to do so. Indeed, it is rather surprising that the party president has not readmitted such men all this time. … Read More
It is not particularly surprising that just as the Soviet leadership is thinking in terms of the revolutionary concept of the right to information for its citizens, the Chinese leadership has decided to tighten control on its media. Indeed, the two news items in the press on the same day … Read More
If it is difficult to welcome the manner and timing of the change of chief ministers in Maharashtra and UP, it is equally difficult not to welcome the changes. On a surface view, Maharashtra’s case is different from UP’s because Mr S.B. Chavan’s replacement is not related directly to the … Read More
Mr Rajiv Gandhi must be an innocent abroad if he truly needed reverses in the recent by-election to appreciate the magnitude of the decline of the Congress party even as an election machine. Surely he is not such an innocent despite his relatively brief experience in politics. Surely he would … Read More
