Articles by Ajit Roy

6,147 of them detained under PSA and the rest under TADA. Obviously persecution is preferred over prosecution. The director- general of police M N Sabarwal said recently that in the past five years, 9,599 persons were killed, of which 5,118 were militants. 1,446 were security personnel and the rest civilians. To enable the security forces to undertake such tasks in defence of unity and integrity. Jammu and Kashmir spends Rs 185 crore annually on 'security related activities', and funds to the extent of Rs 400 crore arc diverted from the plan to the non-plan side. Little is done to end 20 hours of power cuts in the valley in chilling winter.

Not only are the communists and the left totally absent from the field of action in Uttar Pradesh and the national capital, they have nothing to offer which would distinguish them from the rest in relation to the Uttarakhand imbroglio or, for that matter, its inner core, the Mandal issue.

THE human rights issue has today turned out to be a ping-pong game in the diplomatic field,, more in the literal sense than the diplomatic sense, introduced by China way back in the 70s in political vocabulary. In other words, the human rights issue is today a stink bomb that is being constantly lobbed into each other's court by different nations as well as contending forces within a nation. While the Chinese had used the game of ping-pong as overtures to build up friendly contacts where none existed earlier, the human rights game is being played today mainly to tarnish the opponent's image.

Ajit Roy THE recent round of elections in the four northern states and the territory of Delhi is being deservedly subjected to critical analyses in the country and abroad. There is almost universal agreement that the outcome as a whole is a severe setback for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its brand of semi-fascism. There is also a large measure of agreement that the party and the cause it is identified with still have a lot of mass appeal, that they both may be 'down', but are not yet 'out'. The indifferent response to the party's call for bandhs in different states in protest against the jailing (although really in five-star comfort in a posh bungalow) of its top leaders in connection with the criminal proceedings for the violent demolition of the historical Babri masjid a year ago has reinforced the above broad conclusion.

a substantial amount of relevant information, is generally well aware of the issues involved and takes a balanced view of the role of service TNCs in the global economy and the likely impact of LDCs. It notes that while the services provided by TNCs may be necessary for LDCs to compete in world commodity markets, establishment of branches and subsidiaries is contingent on having an adequate supply of skilled people as modern services are skill-intensive. It also states that the pos sibility of factor substitution is more limited in production of such services. Therefore, LDCs could not become internationally competitive in production of services as they have in the production of goods through using their abundant cheap labour. Many services are capital-intensive so that their employment potential would be limited. The MS volume is much more ideologically driven. While the first part is interesting and the analysis rigorous the sector and country papers are disappointing.