Recent content by Praful Bidwai

Physician, first heal thyself

One of the greatest failures of governance in India lies in appalling poor regulation of entrepreneur activities in the public interest.

Yawning nuclear void

The Mayapuri cobalt-60 episode shows Delhi University scientists were reprehensible and proves again that the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board is too inept, unreliable and compromised to perform its assigned functions. We need another agency.

Dangerous nuclear delusion

Small farmers are being driven off their land in Maharashtra to make way for the Indian government's planned "nuclear park" - to be built by the French company AREVA. Yet, nuclear energy is notoriously slow, costly, inefficient and dangerous to develop, as demonstrated by a global decline in nuclear power that contradicts recent government enthusiasm.

When corporations capture the state: corporate lobbying and democracy

Washington-style practices of corporate lobbying have crept up on New Delhi politics, subverting the policy-making process to meet the profit imperatives of private corporations. The new trend of corporate lobbying in India presents a real and serious threat to democracy.

Indian United Progressive Alliance: Time to change course

The Indian government must give up its neo-liberal polices and obsession with GDP growth and shift its ideological centre of gravity leftwards.

Force won’t end Naxal problem

The only sensible approach is to treat violent acts by the Naxalites as crimes, bring them to book through legal processes, and to launch a huge development programme, based on improved governance, which creates rights to food, water, work, healthcare and education.

Receding Right

India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is in decline, its ideology is in retreat and it is unable to enthuse the Hindu middle class. Now is the time to reassert secularism.

Big Brother is watching you!

India’s government has rushed to approve the Unique Identity Project without any discussion of the risks to citizens’ privacy and its possible misuse by the State.

Needed: a food security law

For 60 years, India has consistently failed its poor and now is high time for a Food Security Act that would improve nutrition levels among the masses.

BJP: new composition, same stand by

Is India’s conservative Bharatiya Janata Party obsessed with proving itself the sectarian, confrontationist oddball of Indian politics?

The great nuclear folly

India's Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill represents capitulation to US and Indian corporate pressure, and a retreat from the state's responsibility to protect citizens against hazards.

Equity: the unaddressed agenda

India's Finance Minister's first budget has failed to seize an opportunity to raise social spending and reduce In­dia’s obscene rich-poor, inter-sectoral and geographical inequalities.

War on Maoists

The Indian government must at once stop the military operation against its own citizens in the tribal heartland and open unconditional talks with the Maoists.

Israel as a rogue state

Israel's practice of illegal assasinations, such as the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhough in Dubai, is in line with its ruthless policy of consolidating its occupation, expanding illegal settlements, and tightening its economic hold over Palestinians — in defiance of Security Council resolutions and global opinion.

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

An emphasis on popular mobilisation,  essential to enfranchising the millions who were excluded from public life and political processes for centuries, remains one of Gandhi’s epochal successes.

Himalayan blunder

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should create a special commission to cross-check all references in its report if errors such as the one on Himalayan glaciers are not to recur.

Imperative to resume India-Pakistan dialogue

Due to its lack of a coherent policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, India is repeatedly losing opportunities to help stabilise this critical part of its neighbourhood.

A pragmatic ruler

Jyoti Basu gave the Indian Left parties a unique perspective on practical politics and acquired an unmatched national stature and universal respect.

India’s non-aligned policy

Contrary to some current criticisms, non-alignment was a logical, rational and ethical response to polarisation and inequity, that allowed India to pursue its national interest while providing moral-political leadership to the global South.

 

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.