GLASGOW (Scotland, UK) was once the second most important city in the British Empire. The old docks along the river Clyde brought ships that came from Bengal carrying jute for the mills of Dundee and brought the wealth of the Americas that was earned by the trade in human beings. The city’s old buildings carry the evidence of that wealth, while the stories of its working-class rebellion in 1919 (Red Clydeside) are buried under the flagstones of St. George’s Square along with the memories of the Indian jute workers and the African sugarcane workers.

SINCE the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades back, efforts to rubbish the November revolution and its underlying principles continue. It is another matter that the questions raised and the answers provided to some of the profound issues confronting the human society cannot be ostracised for good. They stand up with the full range of its ideological posers. In fact, with the passage of time they raise new vision in engaging with the current and evolving reality under contemporary neo-liberal capitalism.

Perhaps Vinayak Damodar Savarkar didn’t ever think that new-age Sangh Parivar patriarchs would drag him in such an uncomfortable controversy and that too involving none other than Gandhiji! While formally releasing a book on Savarkar on October 13 in the presence of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Defence minister and former BJP president Rajnath Singh claimed that Savarkar had submitted mercy petitions to the colonial administration while he was locked up in the Andaman jail and that it was Gandhiji who had asked him to do so!

THE Government’s Roadmap for Ethanol Blending India 2020-25, a programme of the Niti Aayog and the ministry of petroleum & natural gas, was launched without irony on World Environment Day, June 5, 2021. This is the new avatar of several past policies which have been repeatedly re-launched only to crash again. Regrettably, the roadmap has been designed without learning from past mistakes and problems.

THE 2021 Global Hunger Report released recently has once again highlighted the deplorable conditions of food insecurity and nutrition in India. The paradox is that India is simultaneously the country with the largest number of hungry people in the world and the country with the largest public stocks of foodgrains.