People’s Democracy wishes its readers a very happy new year as we move into 2014.Such greetings are usually accompanied by the hopes that the new year will turn out to be better than what we all had to go through in 2013. We have often in these columns invoked Lord Tennyson’s famous line “Ringing out the old, ringing in the new.” Such hopes continue to remain and “the new,” we expect, will be for the better. Experience, however, teaches us that life is, more often than not, a continuum.

THE Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which was founded a year ago in Delhi has formed the government after winning 28 out of the 70 seats in Delhi assembly. This rapid rise of a new party in the capital city has sparked off a lot of discussion and has been generally welcomed by the democratic and secular circles in the country.

INSURANCE employees under the banner of South Zone Insurance Employees’ Federation (SZIEF) met five lakh people in the state of Tamilnadu on one single day on 11th December. This was as part of the struggle against attempts to raise foreign direct investment cap in insurance sector from existing 26 per cent to 49 per cent, and to destabilise the public sector General Insurance companies through disinvestment. All these have been proposed in the Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill that is before parliament now.

IT’S a long time since one heard the Indian government raise its voice against the US. Surprising, for a change! Of course, what is not surprising is the conduct of the US. Way back, in 1958, was published a novel, The Ugly American, which dealt with the arrogance of the US diplomats and State department officials. Though the novel deals about their arrogance in the countries in which they were posted, particularly the Third World countries of Asia and Africa, what is true is their arrogance even while dealing with the people of these countries posted in the US.

PROFESSSOR Irfan Habib’s landmark work The Agrarian System of Mughal India: 1556-1707 (1963), recently completed its fifty years in publication. On this occasion the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, JNU, had organised a discussion on the book on December 6, 2013. The occasion saw Professor Satish Chandra, Farhat Hasan, Utsa Patnaik, Shireen Moosvi, Najaf Haider and the author himself coming together to speak on the book.