While the recent Supreme Court judgment in the Singur land acquisition case has provided relief to the people who lost their lands to Tata Motors Limited, the ruling looked at procedural lapses in the land acquisition law rather than question the concept of "public purpose" that is being distorted to include private interests.
The AIADMK is certainly not as invincible as it appears after the elections in Tamil Nadu. It is possible for the DMK to consolidate and register substantial gains in elections to rural and urban local bodies due in October this year. As for the left, it will be the first time that neither the CPI nor the CPI(M) will be represented in the state assembly.
In May 1974, railway workers went on a strike in what was perhaps the most intense working class action in independent India. In what--in retrospect--seems like a dress rehearsal for the Emergency, the government clamped down in a draconian manner. Curiously, however, many political forces and personalities who were to play a major role in the anti-Emergency movement distanced themselves from the strike.
The relationship between veteran leader V S Achuthanandan and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has reached a new low, but neither he nor the party are willing to part ways amicably. After walking out of the party's state conference in Alappuzha in February, Achuthanandan has been consigned to the sidelines. This has been the culmination of a process partly of his own making and partly of the party's making--one involving too many convenient compromises, and a political line that now values pragmatism above all.
Bipan Chandra's contribution to the historiography of Indian nationalist thought was decisive and unparalleled. A scholar who saw immense value in a Marxist reading of history, his sorties into India's post-1947 political history laid him open to the slur of being a Congress sympathiser. Yet he remained true to his principles, a stand that time has vindicated. Above all, he was a teacher who loved the thrust and parry of the classroom, and the framework he devised for a Marxian approach to nationalism will endure.
The 2014 elections in Tamil Nadu are a point of no return for the Congress much like the 1967 general elections. But the consolidation of the Other Backward Classes that led to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's emergence is now over and fragmentation in the sociopolitical sense has thrown the field wide open to a radical realignment of forces.
2014 elections in Tamil Nadu is a point of no return for the Congress much like the 1967 general elections. But consolidation of the OBCs that led to the DMK’s emergence is now over and the fragmentation in the socio-political sense has thrown the field wide open to a radical realignment of forces.
The Aam Aadmi Party shares a few similarities with the Janata Party of 1977, but is also different from it in many ways. While it could make sure of not repeating the mistakes of 1979, it would also do well to make it clear where it stands on many important issues.
The Aam Aadmi Party’s victory lends credence to the belief that idealism can triumph over established political parties like the Congress and the BJP and shows that violent and unscrupulous means are not the only way to gain electoral success.
Lalu Prasad Yadav's long innings in the politics of Bihar has most probably come to an end with the Central Bureau of Investigation's special court convicting him in the fodder scam case. For all his political acumen and grandiose rhetoric, a term of 11 years in the political wilderness after the conviction is very unlikely to see either him or his Rashtriya Janata Dal re-emerge as potent forces.
The debate on allocating or auctioning of coal blocks skirts the central issue of the effi cacy and desirability of allowing exploitation of natural resources by private players. The current policy which was framed in the mid-1990s goes against the spirit of Article 39(b) of the Constitution which holds that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good.
