Articles by Dipankar Bhattacharya

Bihar is now ruled by a government which claims to be delivering “development with justice”. The massacres have apparently stopped and in May 2010, the district court in Ara convicted 23 people for the massacre in Bathani Tola, awarding death penalty to three and life sentence to the rest.

We are deeply concerned by the Indian government’s plans for launching an unprecedented military offensive by army and paramilitary forces in the adivasi (indigenous people)-populated regions of the states of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa and West Bengal.

The bifurcation of Bihar has understandably added to the already widespread concern and anxiety over the future of the state. Bifurcation may provide a convenient news peg on which one can hang the whole question of Bihar's future, but an informed discussion on the challenges and prospects of Bihar's development need not be unduly predicated on the reality of Jharkhand's separation from Bihar.

Chandrashekhar, who was assassinated together with a political colleague on March 31 in the north Bihar district town of Siwan, was a former president of the JNU Students 'Union and son of the very soil of Siwan. He had returned to his home district only a few months ago to dedicate himself as a full-time activist to the cause of the party, people and revolution. 

Of Moral Authority and Political Bankruptcy Dipankar Bhattacharya PARTICIPATION in bourgeois governments has historically been a matter of great debate in the international communist movement. In India, this is perhaps the most manifest programmatic difference that remains till date between the CPI and CPI(M). While the CPI has followed an extremely liberal policy on this question (given an opportunity it has joined all sorts of coalition governments since 1967), the CPI (M) stands for joining only such governments in which it has a decisive presence and say. After the recent assembly elections, the CPI, for instance, has joined the AGP-led government in Assam with merely three members in an assembly of 126 while the CPI(M), with two members, has stayed out.