Economic & Political Weekly: Table of Contents

Resisting 'Sustainable' Communalism

Vol - L No. 26-27, June 27, 2015 

• Editorials

The normalising of communal prejudices and discriminations is a real threat to our republic.

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A Killer Mix

Vol - L No. 26-27, June 27, 2015 

• Editorials

Illicit liquor kills the poor, but most culpable is the short-sighted excise policy.

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Editorials Elusive Smartness On 25 June, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met more than 500 heads of urban local bodies from all over the country. The New Delhi meeting was also an occasion to unveil flagship schemes for “rejuvenating urban centres” in the country.... Read more	Commentary The Mystery of the Sopore Killings Bashir Manzar Sopore in north Kashmir is in the grip of fear and anxiety after six people were killed in less than a month's time. Separatist and militant groups blame the government and security agencies for the killings, while security forces claim the... Read more
Commentary In Pursuit of Happiness Towards Resolving the Land Rights Dilemma of Chit-Dwellers Shubhangi Bhadada, Yashaswini Mittal With the execution of the Land Boundary Agreement between India and Bangladesh, issues relating to the border enclaves are fi nally in the process of being resolved. Concerns surrounding the effective implementation of the Agreement remain, such... Read more	Commentary Net Neutrality to Digital Dynamism Rohit Prasad, V Sridhar The uproar over net neutrality ignores the fact that the net has not been neutral for many years. It is neither feasible nor desirable to return to an imagined state of original innocence. At the same time, the ideal of an internet driven by... Read more
Commentary 'Purified' Carnatic Music and Impure People Contemporary Debates Mythri P U Carnatic music preserves its classical identity not only through its musicality, but also by carefully creating and enforcing codes of conduct based on caste, gender, culture, aesthetics, and attire for both artistes and connoisseurs. This... Read more	Commentary Kaumi Ek Jayate A Call for Interfaith Unity Suchandra Ghosh, Anindita Chakrabarti A report on an ecumenical event held in Kanpur that was organised by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind . Read more
Commentary Finance Commission Proposes, the Union Disposes G R Reddy The restructuring of central plan assistance to states proposed in the Union Budget for 2015-16 will result in neutralising the benefi t of an increase in unconditional tax devolution proposed by the Fourteenth Finance Commission, by imposing... Read more	Commentary K C Sivaramakrishnan (1935-2015) Advocate of the Federal Project Nimmi Kurian K C Sivaramakrishnan, who passed away recently, was the rare bureaucrat who brought his field-level experiences to bear on his understanding of the defi cits of the country's democratic system. A tenacious crusader for decentralisation,... Read more
Book Reviews Economic Development in Punjab Policy Challenges and the Way Forward Sukhpal Singh Punjab's Economic Development in the Era of Globalisation edited by Inderjeet Singh, Sukhwinder Singh and Lakhwinder Singh, Delhi: LG Publishers, 2014; pp 383, Rs 1,035. Read more	Book Reviews Evolution of India's Federalism and Education Policy Simantini Krishnan Education and Federalism in India by M R Kolhatkar, Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2012; pp 348, Rs 975. Read more
Book Reviews Conceptualising and Developing an Efficient Skills System Ankita Gandhi Skills and Skilled Work: An Economic and Social Analysis by Francis Green, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2013; pp 240, £26.99. Read more	Book Reviews The Passing of a Titan Vithal Rajan An Unfinished Agenda: My Life in the Pharmaceutical Industry by K Anji Reddy, New Delhi: Portfolio, Penguin India, 2015; pp 270, Rs 699. Read more
Perspectives Questions of Constitutionality The National Judicial Appointments Commission C Raj Kumar, Khagesh Gautam The National Judicial Appointments Commission system for appointing judges is unconstitutional for four reasons. There is potential for its misuse as appointments to the higher judiciary will be controlled by the executive branch of the... Read more	Housing Discrimination Urban Rental Housing Market Caste and Religion Matters in Access Sukhadeo Thorat, Anuradha Banerjee, Vinod K Mishra, Firdaus Rizvi This study attempts to identify the forms of discrimination experienced by Dalits and Muslims in the rental housing market in five metropolitan areas of the National Capital Region of Delhi. A combination of three distinct methods, the telephonic... Read more
Housing Discrimination In Search of Fraternity Constitutional Law and the Context of Housing Discrimination in India Rowena Robinson The paper begins by acknowledging that scholarship in India has neglected the concept of fraternity for a long time, though today research in other parts of the world seeks to locate it either on the side of "horizontal solidarity" or in... Read more	Special Articles Fragmented Citizenships in Gurgaon Thomas Cowan This paper examines the fragmentary production and governance of Gurgaon, Haryana. Based on fieldwork carried out in 2012, it asserts an epistemology of the "exception" as the central mode of urban production in the city. To do so, the paper... Read more
Special Articles Integrated Resource Planning for Electricity Distributing Utilities in India antonette D'sa Identifying the barriers that discourage the adoption of integrated resource planning by Indian power distribution companies, this paper points to feasible conditions in which these could be overcome. Using the case of the Bangalore Electricity... Read more	Special Articles Women at Risk in the Unregulated Surrogacy 'Industry' Evidence from a Study of Commercial Surrogates in Kolkata Ritika Mukherjee, T V Sekher In recent times India has become a haven for commercial surrogacy, a controversial assisted reproductive technology. Acute poverty means that there are always women ready to rent their wombs. But lack of laws and regulations means there is no... Read more
Notes Land Acquisition Act and the Ordinance Some Issues Dhanmanjiri Sathe This note tries to capture what has been attempted in the Land Acquisition Act, 2013 and the ordinance to amend it that has been hitherto promulgated thrice. It discusses in detail the provisions on public purpose, social impact assessment,... Read more	Notes Tamil Nadus Electronics Industry Lessons for ‘Make in India’ Madhuri Saripalle India's information technology hardware segment is heavily dependent on imports of components and finished goods. After surveying Tamil Nadu's hardware electronics sector, this article argues that the stagnation of the electronics... Read more
Discussion Revisiting Discrepancies in Sanitation Statistics of Rural India Amandeep Singh, Nikhil George This response to Arjun Kumar's "Discrepancies in Sanitation Statistics of Rural India" (EPW, 10 January 2015) points out that the article does not mention another gap in official data: omission of households that reside in... Read more	Commentary Military's Manpower Costs Reality Bites Gautam Navlakha The financial implications of the "one rank, one pension scheme" for the armed forces, and other associated issues, are quite startling. Even if the government must accept the scheme, having committed itself to it, the issue of its... Read more
Review of Rural Affairs / Review Issues Employment Outcomes along the Rural-Urban Gradation Urmila Chatterjee, Rinku Murgai, Martín Rama In an economy that is transforming rapidly, both economically and spatially, the boundaries between rural and urban areas have become blurred. In practice, the rural-urban divide is more accurately characterised as a rural-urban gradation. Labour... Read more	Review of Rural Affairs / Review Issues Debt Bondage and the Tricks of Capital Isabelle Guérin, G Venkatasubramanian, S Kumar Migrant labourers, free from rural bondage, are now bonded to other sources of debt, contracted from the agro-industry or construction sectors. The flows of migration in the brick-making and sugar cane sectors in Tamil Nadu, where bondage... Read more
Review of Rural Affairs / Review Issues Forced Migration of Labourers to Brick Kilns in Uttar Pradesh An Exploratory Analysis Bhaskar Majumder Seasonal employment in the rural economy at a wage rate below subsistence level forces underprivileged labourers to migrate for survival. Brick kilns in India are a major destination for migrant labourers, who are tied to them for the production... Read more	Review of Rural Affairs / Review Issues Livelihoods of Marginal Mining and Quarrying Households in India Md Zakaria Siddiqui, Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt Presenting an exploratory approach by which quantitative data from the National Sample Survey can be analysed to throw light on the most marginal households whose primary occupation is recorded as mining and quarrying, this paper finds that a... Read more
Review of Rural Affairs / Review Issues Managing Water Management Research Analysis of Four Decades of Research and Outreach Programmes in India K Palanisami, D Suresh Kumar, R P S Malik, S Raman, G Kar,Kadiri Mohan An analysis of 40 years of water management research and outreach in India using data from 34 centres and 5,000 field trials across 23 states shows that of the 502 technologies released, only 110 technologies (22%) have been transferred... Read more	Review of Rural Affairs / Review Issues 'One Kind of Democracy' Implementing MGNREGS Siwan Anderson, Patrick Francois, Ashok Kotwal, Ashwini Kulkarni Even if we concede that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is designed as a demand-driven programme, and that local residents desire to have work projects in their area, whether it translates into effective demand, and... Read more

Vedanta - Keyword is Compassion

THE XIV DALAI LAMA





How do we develop concern for others and for ourselves? Analyse and make comparisons, and then develop a conviction for change. You could start by analysing the value of negative feelings or ill-feeling towards others. Then you can consider what that means to you and how you feel about yourself.Then probe the value of the mental attitude and value of the mind that shows concern and compassion for others. Analyse and make comparisons between these two mental attitudes. I have found that a lack of self-confidence and insecurity brings about fears, frustrations and depression.
However, if your nature changes to a selfless concern for the welfare of others, you will exp erience calm ness, a sense of inner stren gth and self confidence.
The capacity for compassi on one has for others is the measuring rod for one's own mental state, and compassion develops an inner strength.... Many people believe that the practice of love, compassion and forgiveness is of benefit to others and will serve no specific purpose to one's self. I think that is wrong. These positive emotions will immediately help one's own mental state.
Many believe that meditation means closing your eyes and sitting motionless, but there are various levels of meditation. Analytical meditation can divert the mind from the problems at hand, but it doesn't help in reducing your problems.
The better way is to face the problem and tackle it from various aspects, reducing mental burden. The problem may remain but the mind achieves peace and calm, and the problem can be dealt with more effectively and positively.