Narendra Modi has been given massive mandate by the people in the just concluded general election. The BJP has received a majority on its own steam, so Modi enjoys a lot of freedom to shape and execute his policies without depending upon the support of coalition partners. But he has clearly indicated that he would like to carry all parties along with him in ...
The massive electoral victory that Narendra Modi achieved in the recent Lok Sabha polls has raised expectations to the sky. A similar situation occurred in 1998 when the NDA came to power under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Expectations soared and by the end of 2003, the Vajpayee regime was battling a unique kind of dissent which came more from wit...
India’s six-week-long parliamentary elections, during which a record 530 million people voted, brought the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to power in New Delhi. The ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), led by the Congress Party, suffered a crushing defeat. The victory was dictated primarily by India’s youth, as 50% of vote...
“Any government with both the power and the will to remedy the major defects of the capitalist system would have the power and the will to abolish it altogether”
Economist Joan Robinson was analyzing the situation a generation ago but her words are a call to create such a government now. Our global problem is not only a perpetually war making empire but als...
Last month, Indian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chairman Dr RK Sinha announced that the design for the thorium-fueled nuclear reactor, known as the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR), has been completed. The AHWR will form the third and final stage in India’s three-stage fuel-cycle plan. A 300-MW prototype is scheduled to be built in 2016, and it will sta...
The decline in Muslim representation in the Lok Sabha to the level of 23, accounting for a mere 4.4% of the entire strength of the Lok Sabha, has given rise to concerns among Muslim clerics and the so-called secularists. A cursory look at the past will show that the situation is similar to that in 1957 when 23 Muslim MPs were elected after the general electi...
I arrive in Azerbaijan as the country celebrates Victory Day [May 10], the day successor states of the former Soviet Union celebrate the defeat of Germany in World War II. No one knows how many Soviet citizens died in that war -- perhaps 22 million. The number is staggering and represents both the incompetence and magnificence of Russia, which led the Soviet...
I will be leaving this week [May 6] to visit a string of countries that are now on the front line between Russia and the European Peninsula: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Azerbaijan. A tour like that allows you to look at the details of history. But it is impossible to understand those details out of context. The more I think about recent ev...
It is not much fun to be in Kiev these days. The revolutionary excitement is over, and hopes for new faces, the end of corruption and economic improvement have withered. The Maidan street revolt and the subsequent coup just reshuffled the same marked deck of cards, forever rotating in...
Ten Sri Lankan Tamils, including two women and five children, who landed at Aricha Munai off the Dhanushkodi coast in Tamil Nadu from Sri Lanka on May 5 2014, have been arrested by the police for entering the country without passports. After preliminary questioning, they are now lodged in Puzhal jail, near Chennai. The media has questioned the decision to...
Injustices are eventually remedied. Indian newspapers have reported that 10 Sri Lankan Tamils, including five children, illegally landed at Arichamunai, off Dhanushkodi, Tamil Nadu, India, in the early hours of May 5 2014. It was the first influx of ‘refugees’ from Sri Lanka after the defeat of terrorism in May...
In the midst of the unrelenting violence that has engulfed a number of major Arab nations and the West-instigated violent actions by Ukrainian fascists now under pressure from Russia, US President Barack Obama undertook a week-long (April 23-29) trip to the Far East and Southeast Asia, visiting Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. His aim was to...
According to an apocryphal story about Chandragupta Maurya, the conqueror’s first attempt to seize the kingdom of Magadha failed. Wandering in disguise one night, he came across a mother scolding her son for chewing his bread from the middle. “Eat the outer sides first and then move to the centre of the roti. Not like Chandragupta Maurya who straightaway att...
Not since the US and EU took over Eastern Europe, including the Baltic countries, East Germany, Poland and the Balkans and converted them into military outposts of NATO and economic vassals, have the Western powers moved so aggressively to seize a strategic country, such as the Ukraine, posing an existential threat to...
BJP’s landslide victory in 2014 elections has come as a surprise to those analysts and poll predictors who failed to understand and appreciate the Modi politics and statecraft and development agenda. The recent polls have shown how elections can be won if dissenting voices at grassroots level are given a patient...
India, that is Bharat, has elected its 14th Prime Minister in a historic election. He is none other than Shri Narendra Modi, securing a virtual landslide victory in a mammoth election drawing 800 million eligible voters. There has not been a clearer vote on Bharat’s choice of leader. It is a victory that individually Shri Narendra Modi can be...
The nation has spoken. And how! Election 2014 will go down as a watershed in India’s history. It marks the awakening of Bharatavarsh’s Kundalini. This ancient nation is casting off its stupor, as it were, and rising to regain its lost glory. As in the case of yogic sādhanā, the path ahead is anything but smooth; it is strewn with thorns, pitfalls...
I am not a crystal gazer to predict the future, nor am I a prophet. But you need to be neither to predict the basic outcome of the 2014 parliamentary elections in India. Despite the forecast of the exit polls, one scenario is of a hung parliament. In such a situation, a political stalemate, peppered with horse trading and intrigues, will continue for a while...
Buddhism has been the most powerful single factor in the development of Sri Lanka’s civilization. For more than 2,300 years, Sri Lanka developed and projected a country image that was predominantly Buddhist. Though this pre-disposition was held back during the 450 years of western colonial rule, no sooner an opportunity arose after the grant of...
Indian democracy is faced with a challenge of electing leaders with a clean image. Over the years, criminalization of politics has almost reached its nadir. The judiciary has tried its best to bring the political system to order by pronouncing several verdicts and ensuring that the provisions of the Representation of Peoples Act 1951 are not violated in any ...
A common view held by many scholars is that ‘Aryans’ or Hindus influenced the Mundari people such that they started worshiping “Aryan” Gods. The same explanation is given to justify the presence of Sanskrit words in their language. However a closer examination of their festivals and practices give rise to a view that such ‘Aryan’ practices are basic to their...
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Hari Om
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11 May 2014
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The BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, who is also seeking election to the Lok Sabha from Varanasi, will sweep the polls in this prestigious constituency on May 12. Congress candidate Ajai Rai (a criminal), AAP candidate Arvind Kejriwal (an anarchist), and the unremarkable candidates of the SP and the BSP and all others in the fray will forfeit...
The Sanskrit meaning of Munda is ‘shaven head’. But the Munda people are not seen with shaven heads. From the records of the British period, it is known that they used to grow pigtails and even tie up their long hair into a knot {1} though they have a hair removal ceremony for the new-born baby. This Narota ceremony is held on the 9th day of birth, when the ...
The nation eagerly awaits the conclusion of the final phase of the polls on May 12 and the announcement of the results four days later. Already the writing on the wall is clear – people want change. Picking up the thread, several opinion polls have begun speculating the numbers. The Congress party, facing anti-incumbency due to allegations of corruption, mal...
Q: What are your views on the South African initiative to mediate between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil minority? South African President Jacob Zuma has appointed Mr Cyril Ramaphosa as its envoy on Sri Lanka and he is due in Sri Lanka next month to take stock of the situation.
According to a report in the Sunday Times, Colombo of April 20, Preside...
The United States announced new sanctions on seven Russian government officials April 28. A long-used tactic, sanctions can yield unpredictable effects or have no effect at all, depending upon how they are crafted. It is commonly assumed that sanctions are applied when a target country’s actions are deemed unacceptable. The sanctioning nation presumably choo...
Q: How do you see the death of Major Varadarajan who belonged to Chennai? What does it indicate about our fight against Jihadi terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir?
Never before in Chennai had I seen such public participation in a military funeral as that of Major Varadarajan. This should remind all those who talk of Tamil separatism that the spirit of nationalism...
As the long drawn parliamentary election meanders to a close, it would be churlish to deny that Narendra Modi gambled well in his choice of Varanasi as the wellspring of his plans for rejuvenating India, economically and civilisationally. It is equally evident that the people of Gujarat realise he will quit Vadodara in the event of being anointed Prime Minis...
Narendra Modi’s win with sufficient majority to form a strong national government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is essential for India’s national security. His win will prevent the balkanisation of India and political chaos in South Asia. The 2014 Parliamentary elections that began on April 7 are drawing to a close; results will be out on May...
Two low-intensity improvised explosive devices (IED) exploded in two adjacent sleeper coaches of the Bangalore – Guwahati tri-weekly super fast express just as the train streamed into Chennai Central station around 7.15 AM on May 1. One young woman was killed and 14 others wounded in the explosions. The city waking up to May Day holiday was stunned. And the ...
In less than eight months, the United States and NATO will pull most, if not all, of their troops out of Afghanistan to end a decade-long disastrous and wholly opaque military campaign. It can now be said with confidence that al-Qaeda, ostensibly the United States’ prime enemy, is not just barely alive in Pakistan, but is doing well. That situation did not d...
Naveen Patnaik may be sure of bouncing back to power as Chief Minister of Odisha for the fourth time in succession and win a good number of seats in the Lok Sabha for his party, but he is equally worried about the possibility of his tally declining as compared to the 2009 polls. A desperate move by the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) workers to garner more seats...
The ongoing elections will most likely push the Leftist parties into total irrelevance. Following a dialectics neglected by Marx and Angels, it is the Leftist bloc that is showing signs of withering away. Celebrate it. For, as Cho Ramaswamy put it aptly, if the Left has any future in the country, the country has no future...