India’s Public Sector Steel Industry “Our steel industry is gigantic, but still not large enough for our needs. Steel plays a very vital and little understood role in our lives and in our economy. What is steel? How is steel made? Where is it made? Is one steel plant exactly like another? Is the technology…
With a step forward from Manarchy to a Republic, Iran has taken two steps backwards : restricting freedom, curbing women’s right and executions after summary trials. WHO would believe that I should work 10 hours a day for 37 years to help my country only to see it go back to the point where I…
Nothing seems to work right in Manipur, and a combination of corruption, misgovernment, and unemployment, compounded by the continuing presence of the Army and various paramilitary forces, is fuelling the people’s frustration and aiding their drift towards rebellion. At first sight, Imphal is cloaked in quietude. It looks more like a small town than the…
“War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions when they have developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations, states or among political groups, and it has existed ever since the emergence of private property and of classes.” —Mao Zedong Is China helping insurgents in Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram with arms and ideological…
But the people have their ways of making do Close to one-sixth of Iran’s population of 38 million lives in Teheran, the sprawling capital that slides southward from the cold slopes of an Elborz Mountains spur. And Teheran was trying, in the weeks I spent there, with a touch of grouchiness, to look like a…
The violence and the passions that have unleashed a caste war in Gujarat have found sympathetic onlookers in Tamil Nadu. These onlookers may not remain passive: they are already contemplating demonstrations of support for the anti-reservationists in Gujarat. “If it’s necessary, we’ll all go to Gujarat and join the agitation,” bursts out Mrs. Bagalakumari…
Iran is ruled by many Shahs today, each wearing Islam’s robes that cloak the terror they replaced The most intense patriotism usually flourishes in the rear lines,” wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago about Russia at war with Nazi Germany. Not so in post-revolution Islamic Iran. Four months after “Allah’s victorious forces” locked horns…
The ‘poverty line’ is assumed to be consumption of Rs 65 per capita per month in rural areas and Rs 75 in urban areas at 1977-78 prices. On this basis in 1977-78, 306 million people in India were living below the ‘poverty line’, of whom 249 million were in rural areas and 57 million in…
The first spark flew on 6 June. A Bengali shopkeeper at Lembucchara, 8 km from Agartala, lent a tribal friend of his a dao (sickle) to cut a pineapple with. Joking about the sickle’s blunt edge, the tribal tossed it back to the shopkeeper. It hit another tribal standing close by, wounding him negligibly. But…
The kisans got a free ride, and helped give the Congress(l) a lift Never had so many people gained so little from so heralded an event as the Kisan Rally in Delhi on 16 February. Estimates of the crowd gathered on the Rajpath lawns ranged from 2.5 million by Delhi Police Commissioner PS Bhinder to…
The Supreme Court, which has been at the centre of the government’s attempts to subvert the Constitution an the judiciary Poorly paid, snowed under by a huge backlog of pending cases, buffeted by the government’s attempts to manipulate judicial processes and appointments, our judiciary has not been able to preserve its independence. At the same…
Beginning with this issue, New Delhi becomes an Asian newsmagazine. Thirty-nine of the 211 nations in the world are located in Asia. In land area, this huge continent accounts for a fifth of the globe. In terms of people, more than half the human population lives here. The total gross national product of all the…
Very little authentic reportage has emerged from Iran since the nation’s Shia clergy led a mass revolt against the Shah in early 1979. Strategically and economically, Iran has become very important for India since then. One-third of our oil imports come from there, while our exports to Iran have boomed after the US hostage capture…
The ten-week-old agitation against reservations in Gujarat which has so far claimed 30 lives, is the second most serious agitation of its kind in the country since the Constitution was adopted in 1950. The first was in Bihar in 1978; it took 30 lives. Tamil Nadu is preparing to launch a similar agitation soon. While…
Four and a half years after it was struck by a terrible accident in which 375 miners died, the Chasnalla colliery is nowhere near being re-opened. Nor are the dead miners’ families in sight of a lasting solution for their problems. The road to Chasnalla is not an easily forgettable experience. The geography is that…
Rehabilitating the Chasnalla victims families has proved to be an on-going task. The Indian Iron and Steel Company’s welfare officers at Chasnalla wear a perpetually harassed look. Every day their offices are mobbed by complainants: relatives who allege desertion by widows who allege cheating by their dead husbands relatives; it is a noisy scene. fuelled…
“Chasnall was unique”, said a civil servant in Patna. “The government moved very fast in rehabilitating the victims’ families. There were few delays, little red tape.” Had the government .set up a cell to monitor rehabilitation, to take follow-up action? “No,” said the civil servant, crestfallen. In Ranchi we met the legendary KB Saxena…
How Madras became India’s film capital The next time you are talking about Indian films, don’t let your tongue slip into saying “the Bombay film industry” No longer is Bombay India’s film capital. In 1979, less Hindi films were produced than in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. The Censors in Madras can barely keep up with…
What is the current state of youth politics? Every youth organisation is dominated by the parent party and suffers from the prejudices of old politicians. Every youth organisation is dormant most of the time but takes tostreet warfare when roused. Youth politics are only a youthful version of the rot that has eaten into our…
Has anything changed in the two Bihar villages that hit the headlınes? Six kilometres from Harnaut, the jeep broke down in the mud. The slipper-shod lady decided to continue her journey on elephant-back. Perched dangerously behind her and the mahout was another lady, a member of Parliament. It took the elephant three hours to reach…
‘One hears the echoes of the movement for an independent Bangladesh in Assam today’, said a Dacca newspaper recently. The situation in Assam and the north-east is as difficult as it is complex. Although decades of political and economic indifference have pushed the Assamese into their present agitation, the movement has already acquired dangerous colours…
Three documents seem to indicate that the Assam problem is not about to be easily solved. Intractable and increasingly aggressive, the Assam agitation last fortnight edged closer to ugly confrontation. The deadline for a Central government decision on the foreigners issue set by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the Gana Sangram Parishad (GSP)…
There is some spectacular courting in this unique hotel in Delhi Western Court, an official hostelry in the heart of New Delhi, epitomises the decay of our political .system. It has become a classic symbol of everything that is corrupt, debauched and venal in our political life. Gossip about Western Court exploded into lurid fact…
It could have been a coincidence, but on 18 October Dr Basanti Dulal Nag Chaudhuri, ex-vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, was in Geneva; Dr Vidya Prakash Dutt, former pro-vice-chancellor of Delhi University and presently a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha and head of the department of Chinese and Japanese studies at Delhi University, was…
A thriller is the sort of book that you take to bed with you and then read on through the night, impatient that the pages aren’t turning fast enough. The sort of book whose ending you are tempted to read in the beginning just so that the agony of not knowing what happens or whodunit…
Sikh love Muslim love Sikh It is difficult to judge Indian writing in English, saturated as it often is with the smells, sights and sounds of the ethos it springs from. Punjabi writing in English is a case in point. It carries strong overtones of the earthiness and directness of the people of that region.…
Just as a man casts off his old clothes only to wear new ones, says the Bhagvadgita, so does a man die only to be reborn. Somewhat the same kind of samsara was prescribed for this magazine, New Delhi. It was born in September 1978 and had six issues published. Though it did not die,…
Says the self-opinionated master. But he is also first-rate. I’m a very well known painter. I don’t care for those stultified art critics. It’s you ‘unknowledgeables’ – who can reach out on our behalf.” The ego behind that ‘well known painter’ remark is evident as is Biren De’s scorn for things conventional, and his voluminous…