Documentary on Kandhamal by K.P Sas...
This year there was international outrage when...
Environment
Featured Stories
India
Land Acquisition Ordinance: Government-Corporate nexus against people and democracy
(This article was written in January 2015 and published in Mainstream Weekly. The article is released again in the view of the ongoing farmers movement, and the frequent land acquisitions taking place all over the country in the name of express ways, smart cities, education cities, national-international airports etc.) The Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013 (LARR Act 2013)[Read More…]
COVID Response Watch
Fewer camels, low prices mar Rajasthan’s Pushkar camel fair
Rajasthan’s over 100 years old Pushkar Mela is one of the most famous and largest camel fairs in the world. Due to the Covid pandemic though, the event has taken a big hit with both low arrivals of camels for sales and plummeting prices for the animals. “ I have been coming to Pushkar fair continuously for 10 years. This is the first[Read More…]
World
Foreseeable Risk: Omicron Makes its Viral Debut
It has been written about more times than any care to remember. Pliny the Elder, that old cheek, told us that Africa always tended to bring forth something new: Semper aliquid novi Africam adferre. The suggestion was directed to hybrid animals, but in the weird pandemic wonderland that is COVID-19, all continents now find themselves bringing forth their types, making[Read More…]
Globalisation
Time for India and other developing nations to quit WTO
The 12th ministerial conference (MC12) of the World Trade Organization will take place from November 30 to December 3, 2021 at Geneva, Switzerland. The negotiation note distributed on the different issues on the agenda shows that the WTO is a developed countries’ club. Developing and least developed countries will be the losers if they align with this organization. The WTO[Read More…]
Human Rights
Open Letter to the Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi
“Selective” advocacy of Rights violations?” “When daily incidents of hate crimes, lynchings, caste atrocities and state violations become common place, Every egregious violation deserves our attention” Dear Sir, You had in your speech on the 28th NHRC foundation programme on 12th October, 2021 made four assertions on human rights to which the PUCL, as one of the oldest civil liberties[Read More…]
Imperialism
U.S. Terrorism 101: The Bert Sacks Story
Since the annual U.S. Veterans Day holiday honoring military veterans was just observed on November 11, it seems more than appropriate to suggest the creation of a U.S. Victims Day, just as in a similar effort at truth in labeling, the Defense Department should be renamed the Offensive War Department. For the victims of American terrorism far outnumber the American[Read More…]
Communal Harmony
On the origin of Indian Identity
In the beginning, it would seem Mankind knew a thing or two about anthropology. Then came religion to manipulate it. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has boasted of Hindutva (a concept of Hindu supremacy) as India’s national identity. This would seem convincing to a foreign tourist who visits Taj Mahal, photographs people on the Ganges, sun bathes on Goan beaches,[Read More…]
Climate Change
The Big Industry That COP26 Failed to Tackle
The impact of agriculture on climate change is significant. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the agriculture sector is responsible for 10 percent of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, after transportation (29 percent), electricity production (25 percent), industry (23 percent), and commercial and residential usage (13 percent). However, according to Peter Lehner, managing attorney for EarthJustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm,[Read More…]
Environmental Protection
Integrity Due Diligence Necessary To Curb Illegal Mining
If a bridge collapses soon after construction, the contractor would be blacklisted. If someone cheats a bank, they will not be allowed to manage public moneys, whether in a bank, mutual fund, insurer or even as a KYC processor. But if someone illegally mines our shared inheritance of mineral wealth, we wonder why there is no such prohibition. India’s National[Read More…]
Counter Solutions
The ‘Dharitri Youth Conclave 2021’: In search of ecological citizenship
The progressive Odia daily newspaper ‘Dharitri’ has organised ‘Odisha Youth Conclave on Climate Change’ while celebrating its 48th birthday on 24th of November 2021. In a profit driven mass media industry with its rent seeking family ownerships, it is rare these days for newspapers to think about people and planet. The ‘Dharitri’ and its family deserves all appreciation for being[Read More…]
Resource Crisis
The Project of Capital and the Project of the Proletariat in a time of World Crisis
ABSTRACT This is a response to the two sets of articles written by Sajai Jose on the Fourth Industrial Revolution and on the world’s and India’s hunger crisis. It is in two parts. In the first part it lays the historical background of the response of capital in the face of periodic crises it faces and people’s response to it.[Read More…]
Patriarchy
Gender Equality in Islam and Muslim Women in India: An Agenda for Reforms
Islam is one of the great religions of the world, whose followers are found in every country and continent. As an egalitarian belief system, it introduced the concepts of universal brotherhood and non-discrimination among Muslims on the ground of sex or race. Islam gave the women fundamental rights and championed all movements to improve the status of women, at a[Read More…]
Palestine
We Do Exist: Why the Palestinian Voice Should Take Center Stage
At a recent New York event, the President of the Foreign Press Association Ian Williams declared, before an approving audience, that it is time “to reclaim the narrative on Palestine”. This phrase – ‘reclaiming the narrative’ – is relatively new to the Palestinian discourse. Years ago, the concept, let alone its implementation, were quite alien: the pro-Israel crowd refused, and[Read More…]
South Asia
Crisis, which, whose?
Crises deluge this region considered a sub-continent in Asia. The questions are: (1) Which crises? (2) Whose crises are these? (3) At which stage are these crises? A question, also, encounters a part of the progressives: Are the endeavors for a revolutionary change going through a crisis? The first three questions – which and whose, and which stage – help[Read More…]
Annihilate Caste
The Shudras in Hindtva – Living Without a Soul
Introduction: The Hindutva school has been in power since 2014. It wants to rule India forever. Actually it was never out of power in another sense of the concept, power. As an organization–the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)– that came into existence in 1925 was controlling many nerve centers of India’s socio-spiritual structures of the Hindu system. Ideological browbeating of Muslims[Read More…]
Life/Philosophy
Examining the Future Readership of Hasan Azizul Huq, a Writer of Suffering Humanity
Hasan Azizul Huq (1939-2021), one of the leading Bangladeshi writers, passed away on 15 November 2021, leaving behind him an exceptional body of works. He was mainly a short story writer, but he also wrote three novels and many essays. His first book, Samudrer Swapna, Shiter Aranya, a collection of short stories, was published in 1964. Each volume he published[Read More…]
Arts/Literature
Cardboard Houses
How sad the rain sounds On the cardboard roofs How sad that my people live In cardboard houses The worker is coming down [from the hills] Almost dragging his feet From the weight of suffering Look how much he suffers Look how much the suffering weighs Above he leaves his pregnant wife Down the hill is the city[Read More…]
Book Review
Witness: Poetry of Dissent
WITNESS: THE RED RIVER BOOK OF POETRY OF DISSENT, 2021, Edited by NABINA DAS RED RIVER, an independent poetry press run by the intrepid Dibyajyoti Sarma has spearheaded recent poetry publications in India – of diverse tenor and fine aesthetic value. Red River has very recently published this staggering anthology of ‘dissent’ poetry to counter the tyranny of our system,[Read More…]
