Adieu, Amma!
My Amma (Malayalam word for Mother) passed away...
Environment
Featured Stories
India
Lies about the Green Revolution Having Saved India from Hunger Can be Very Harmful for Policy
A lie repeated a hundred times will not turn a lie into a truth. The big media should realize this and stop perpetuating the lie of the green revolution saving India from hunger, long after the world has awakened to the reality of how harmful the green revolution has been from the point of nutrition, food safety, environment and climate[Read More…]
World
Flagging Support: Zelenskyy Loses Favour in Washington
Things did not go so well this time around. When the worn Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy turned up banging on the doors of Washington’s powerful on September 21, he found fewer open hearts and an increasingly large number of closed wallets. The old ogre of national self-interest seemed to be presiding and was in no mood to look upon the[Read More…]
Globalisation
Tossing Neoliberalism into the Dumpster
It’s official, according to a speech by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, the United States is jumping off the neoliberal globalization bandwagon (a root cause of domestic extremism) and it couldn’t come soon enough as institutions of government are sucking up more and more angry exhaust fumes from constituents, as well as encountering a world trade map with China bullying[Read More…]
Human Rights
Stop State Repression Against Protesters Against Bauxite Mining in Odisha
“The rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and poverty in such complicated and indirect ways as to leave the victims bewildered.” – Howard Zinn Since the first week of August, in Raygada, Kalahandi and Koraput districts, there has been[Read More…]
Imperialism
The United States in the World: Making Sense of the Past Forty Years (1981-2023)
The United States of America has been the pre-eminent country on Earth for over 40 years.[1] There are many competing analyses of these developments, different understandings, etc., and with all kinds of various intellectual ramifications from these. However, along with genuine efforts to accurately understand this period, there is much misinformation, obfuscation, and plain lying about its role in the[Read More…]
Communal Harmony
Freedom Movement Re-Emphasized the Heritage of Communal Harmony
It is an undeniable fact of Indian history that all those leaders of the freedom movement who received the greatest support and affection of people were those who had very firm faith in communal harmony. For Jawaharlal Nehru inter-faith harmony was a matter of the deepest commitment and a firm base for the progress of the country. Badshah Khan[Read More…]
Climate Change
Antarctica Hits Records as Global Heat Looms Large for 2024
“Climate breakdown has begun. Our climate is imploding faster than we can cope,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. (Source: 2024 Likely to be Hottest Year on Record, Phys.org, September 6, 2023) A report from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) released by the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Berlin in the spring of 2023 reveals how surprisingly fast the[Read More…]
Environmental Protection
Keeping Cattle on Public Land Is Bad for People, Cows, Wildlife, and the Planet
The U.S. beef industry is destroying the American Wild West and worsening the climate crisis. When conservationist Aldo Leopold persuaded the U.S. Forest Service in 1924 to establish the nation’s first federally approved wilderness of more than 500,000 acres around the headwaters of the Gila River in southwestern New Mexico, he did not anticipate that this priceless pristine land would be invaded[Read More…]
Counter Solutions
Veganic Farming: How My Tiny Plot Produced 5,000 Pounds of Food Without Using Manure
Is it possible to grow food without exploiting animals in gardening/homesteading and farming systems? Even if we do not keep domesticated animals, isn’t it necessary to at least use animal manure? The veganic way of growing shows us that not only is it possible to grow fruits, vegetables, and herbs without manure but it is also productive, ecologically sustainable, and[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
The Escalating Prevalence of Child Marriage and its Significance for Jharkhand: An Urgent Call for Action
Abstract Child marriage is a grave violation of human rights that continues to persist, despite laws and regulations against it. Shockingly, one out of every five girls worldwide is either formally married or in an informal union before they turn 18. In the least developed countries, this number nearly doubles, with 36 percent of girls being married before the age[Read More…]
Palestine
Ghosts of the Past: For Israel, War on UNESCO is an Existential Battle
Jericho does not belong to the Palestinians alone. It belongs to the whole of humanity. For Israel, however, the recognition by UNESCO of Jericho as a “World Heritage Site in Palestine” complicates its mission of erasing Palestine, physically and figuratively, from existence. The decision was described by Israel’s foreign ministry as a “cynical” ploy by the Palestinians to politicize UNESCO.[Read More…]
South Asia
The emergence of Bangladesh: Dynamics of people’s cultural and political struggles – Part I
Contradictions don’t spare life, individual or collective, or class.[1] And, people’s life, spanning survival and struggles, don’t sit immobile. So, there’s dynamics in people’s struggle that moves on the matrix of class contradictions, and the matrix is complex. None, neither individual nor combine, neither production nor distribution, neither ideology nor economy, neither songs and dramas nor fairy tales and musical[Read More…]
Annihilate Caste
The Unholy Origins of Castes in India
Adi Shankaracharya, reflecting on the sublime mysteries of non-dualism, the undifferentiated reality and the irrevocable principle of oneness governing all existence, emerged from the waters after performing his daily ablutions in the holy Ganges at the ancient city of Varanasi. Suddenly, a disheveled outcast, the peddler in pollution, the dark and abominable Chandala appeared with his four big dogs like[Read More…]
Life/Philosophy
Rights of Older Persons must be fulfilled!
On 1 October, the world will once again observe the ‘International Day of Older Persons’. It is the 33rd commemoration of this United Nations Day. Such days are often relegated to tokenism and cosmetic exercises filled with a plethora of speeches and feel- good activities. The theme ‘Fulfilling the Promises of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for Older Persons:[Read More…]
Arts/Literature
In Jawan, Shah Rukh Khan makes us an offer we can refuse
Cast of Jawan Shah Rukh Khan: Hindi-speaking North Indian Rajput army-man Vikram Rathore and his son, the ‘casteless’ policeman Azad Nayanthara: Hindi-speaking upper caste (Bhumihar, Brahmin or probably Rajput given the arrange marriage scenario between Azad and her), head of special forces, Narmada Rai Vijay Sethupathi: Corrupt industrialist Kalee Gaikwad, Maratha by name but generic South Indian by accent, played[Read More…]
Book Review
Review of Immanuel Ness’s Migration as Economic Imperialism
The traditional Marxist critique of ideology has understood both the functional and epistemological dimensions of bourgeois ideologue’s claims. This tradition has always emphasized how ideas are both conditioned by the historical conjunctures and class positions of the people and institutions that materially embody them, but also – and equally important – how, under class societies, the economically dominant class, in[Read More…]
COVID Response Watch
Shadow of Covid lingers over the erstwhile Kingdom of Cooch Behar
The princely state of Cooch Behar merged with the Dominion of India on August 8, 1949 and became a part of the State of West Bengal on January 1, 1950. To go to Cooch Behar, one has to cross Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri districts, which were also once part of other neighbouring hill kingdoms and annexed by the British. During my[Read More…]
