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January 2010

Need-based development in a free, just society: the lasting legacy of Mahatma Gandhi

If one were asked to name “purely” indigenous texts from different cultures and countries which contain original political thought, vision and ideas, the choice in India would logically be narrowed to only two works: Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, written in 1909.

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Expert Body Slips Over Pace of Melting: Himalayan glaciers are receding

The world’s dirtiest industries like oil, coal, automobiles, chemicals, cement and steel, and their supporters in the climate change-deniers’ lobby, must feel elated at recent developments which detract from the agenda of fighting climate change. Their greatest source of joy lies in the failure of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference at Copenhagen to produce a strong, effective, legally-binding agreement which imposes deep emissions-cut obligations on the industrialised countries.

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They are still melting…

As always happens in India, the scientific controversy over the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate on the rapid recession of Himalayan glaciers has turned into political contention. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has used the IPCC’s retraction of its 2007 forecast that the glaciers could disappear by 2035 to corner IPCC chairman and director of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) RK Pachauri and claimed that his own stand is fully “vindicated”.

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Jyoti Basu's mixed legacy

In communist veteran Jyoti Basu's death, India has lost its most illustrious politician and the last leader who embodied a personal link between the many phases of Indian politics since the early 1940s.

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After Copenhagen: A People-Centered Action Agenda - Invitation to a Talk by Praful Bidwai on (15 February 2010)

From: Suhas Borker Working Group on Alternative Strategies

You are invited to a Talk by Praful Bidwai on After Copenhagen: A People-Centered Action Agenda

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The Indian Left’s Yasser Arafat - Jyoti Basu’s legacy

In Jyoti Basu’s death, India has lost the last leader who embodied a personal link between the many phases through which Indian politics has evolved since the early 1940s. Basu was not just a major Left leader in a country which has the world’s biggest Communist party barring China’s. He was an active participant in the many processes that have shaped politics, including trade union and peasant movements, radicalisation of the intelligentsia, contestations between social-group identities, and crystallisation of the party system. He was India’s most illustrious political leader, with a stature that few have matched anywhere in the world.

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Fouling up the air

India has become collusive in the weak and inequitable Copenhagen Accord. The government must correct course if India’s poor are not to suffer further.

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