Opinion Call for new probe

It alleged that the SIT was compromised by Modi and referred to the appointment of an amicus curiae by the Supreme Court. “…To be satisfied with just nine cases investigated by SIT is a farce to say the least. Until and unless a thorough probe is conducted… justice will not be done… The so-called ‘clean chit’ to Modi in one of the nine cases investigated by SIT cannot whitewash the real crimes of Modi,” it added.

The New Age lamented the absence of a strong political alternative in the state. “The main political opposition,Congress,is not only a badly divided house,it has failed to show any political will to counter Modi’s offensive.”

FAILURE OF CAPITALISM

The CPM’s People’s Democracy devoted its latest issue to the recently-held CPM party congress. An editorial said that the “Marxist-Leninist understanding that capitalism can never be a system free from either human exploitation and crises” has been vindicated. In the Indian context,the editorial admitted that “while the objective situation is sharply pointing towards the need to strengthen a political alternative to capitalism,the subjective factor,that is,the unity in (the) struggles of all the exploited sections of the people led by the working class,needs to be strengthened to establish… a political alternative”.

The editorial added: “There is an urgent need to meet and defeat the ideological challenges that imperialism and reactionary forces mount against Marxism and socialism. For two decades,they propagated the ‘eternality’ of capitalism and pronounced the death of Marxism and socialism. Today in the face of this severe global capitalist crisis,such ideological offensives are being severely mounted through new theoretical constructs like post-modernism… The essential point of all these ideological attacks is to deny the very existence of class exploitation and class struggle and seeking to portray human society and civilisation as the summation of a multitude of micro or local phenomena. These ideological challenges,thus,seek to obfuscate the truth of intensified human exploitation and the degradation of nature under capitalism,” it argued.

Tarnished army

New Age carried an article on the controversies surrounding the army,claiming that the “spate of controversies” might have been a result of the “vicious factional feud within the force as well as the manipulations of the arms dealers.” It says that the recent controversies “not only tarnish the image of [the armed forces but have become a blot on the very functioning of the UPA 2 government.”

The article talked about corruption in defence procurement in the context of the Tatra truck deal and argued that there was evidence to prove the involvement of the officers of the armed forces in scams. It alleged that the “arms supplier lobby” has “conquered and influenced the armed forces,the government and every conceivable pillar institutions of the state.” The article also claims that the “arms supplier lobby” has “the power even to decide the chiefs of (the) three forces and fix their tenure. They even have the capacity to create conflict between the government and defence officials. They also have the influence in private media channels,which run campaigns to achieve their target.”

It also said that the “serious shocking revelations should not be brushed away as an outcome of the recent conflict between the army chief and the government… It is not the question of who is right and who is not,it is a question of a serious risk to the nation’s sovereignty,integrity and security. The government has become insensitive and irresponsible even in safeguarding the security of the nation.”