It’s been raining incessantly for three days. It is a cool early morning in the beginning of July and I have just made a cup of coffee. Now an electrical power outage has occurred and so I am sitting in a rocking chair in the semi-darkness savoring my coffee and feeling thankful that I made it in time. I have[Read More...]
More than 70 people died from lightning strikes on a single day July 12 2021 in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. This is not an isolated case but reflects an overall rising trend in lightning incidents and mortality. On June 7 in West Bengal 27 lightning deaths were reported. Last year (2020) between June 25 and[Read More...]
Comrade DV Rao, key leader of Telangana People’s Armed Struggle(1946-51). He is remembered on his death anniversary today. *** Even as the China Communist Party (CCP or CPC) celebrated its centenary (1921-2021 July 1), there is a shrill campaign against it in the global media, and even by some Leftist parties and their media. Many attribute it to post-Mao developments[Read More...]
The never ending queues outside the clinics, jam packed hospitals, and the backlogs of the surgeries, this is the typical scene outside any hospital in India. In order for a nation to conquer any health emergency and to avoid such situations to crop up in future, the first and foremost heed should be paid to the healthcare personnel. India’s frail[Read More...]
Today we commemorate the 37th death anniversary of legendary Comrade Devulapalli Venkatestwara Rao or DV. Arguably DV was the greatest Indian Communist leader ever. No Comrade on theoretical plane contributed as much to stitch the thread or pave the path of mass line, integrating Mao Tse Tung thought with the peculiarities of the Indian conditions. In the manner of a[Read More...]
The Indian corporate law firms have reaped huge benefits since the liberalisation of the Indian economy. Traditionally run as family or kinship-based enterprises, the law firms have expanded and modernised themselves to become more professionally organised in consonance with the ethos and demands of liberalisation. However, even after three decades of liberalisation, the elite law firms still suffer from a[Read More...]
Dear Darapuriji, Thank you for forwarding to me the charming piece of Dr. Bhagwan Das about his initial encounters with Dr. Ambedkar. The account has such endearing aura about both the persons. As I read it, memories welled up and I recalled the first opportunity I had of seeing Dr. Ambedkar at close quarters and even putting a question or[Read More...]
Many accounts of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 have concentrated more on the later glorious phase when victory of the Bangladesh liberation fighters and the Indian forces fighting in close cooperation with each other was achieved, or was close to being achieved. This glorious and well-deserved victory should not , however, lead us to neglecting the fact that victory[Read More...]
The British materialist philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is one of the fathers of social contract theory and modern political philosophy. His magnus opus – Leviathan[i] – is a text which á la Plato’s Republic covers a wide breadth of subjects from epistemology, science, religion, and moral and political philosophy. However, his text is most widely remembered for its monarchism-endorsing political[Read More...]
July 6, 2021, was the 114th birth anniversary of Frida Kahlo – a revolutionary painter and socialist. Today, she has been fetishized, commodified and sanitized: her self-portraits and photographs stare out from T-shirts, calendars, fashion magazines and jewelry; her unique personality is used to sell everything – from Barbie dolls to cosmetics box sets. Kahlo’s present-day status as a global[Read More...]
