When I sit to write the first line of this piece, the air around my house is filled with the war cries of ‘Jai Shree Ram’, ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ and ‘Hindu Rashtra Ki Jai’. The lanes and by-lanes are jammed with trucks on which the boys in orange T-shirts are dancing and chanting the slogans with the unique beats[Read More…]

PUCL demands action against the police team which fabricated cases against innocents and conducted slipshod investigation in the 2008 Jaipur bomb blasts, which killed 74 people. Fresh investigation should be ordered to ensure justice to the kin of the 74 killed and 150 injured. Compensation must be given to the five acquitted for the loss of 15 years of their[Read More…]

Backward classes are supposed to be increasingly a politically influential segment of Indian society. So it should come as a surprise that only 6% of allocated funds for all backward class schemes in the financial year 2022-23 were actually spent in the first nine months of this financial year ie up to 31 December 2022 by the Department for Social[Read More…]

National Federation of Indian Women write a letter to PM Modi against BJP State President K Surendran for insulting CPIM women in Kerala   Shri.  NARENDRA MODI Hon’ble Prime Minister Union of India Respected Prime Minister, Sub: IMMEDIATE INTERVENTION & ACTION AGAINST K. SURENDRAN, Kerala State President of BJP. We, the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) are writing this to bring[Read More…]

There are several widely publicized schemes of the government to reduce poverty and increase welfare of people, but in order to understand their real impact many relevant questions need to be asked. In the case of rural employment guarantee or NREGA we need to know to what extent the demands for employment works are actually being met, and to what[Read More…]

Bundelkhand region, spread over 14 districts of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, is best known for the valiant struggles against colonial rule by Jhansi Ki Rani Lakshmibai and her several equally brave companions like Jhalkaribai. Later this was an area of several efforts by revolutionary freedom fighters like Chandrashekhar Azad. The intenseness of anti-colonial struggles here may partly explain the[Read More…]

Land, along with water, is essential for habitat, living, and survival of human and non-human species. It is not merely a source of food and livelihood for the food-producers, but also the socio-cultural basis of their lives. Colonization for resources In the 17th and 18th Centuries, industrializing European states captured territories in the Americas, Africa and Asia. They realised the[Read More…]

I may be wrong,but I believe that the ominous and dangerous verdicts of both the Judicial Magistrate of Surat and the Honourable Speaker are marred by an elementary fallacy we all learnt during the penultimate years of higher secondary education. Let us put the most offensive construction on Rahul Gandhi’s remark.Then it will turn out like this: ALL THIEVES ARE[Read More…]

What a coup.  Nakedly amoral but utterly self-serving in its saccharine minted glory.  India’s showman Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who otherwise appears to have clerkish, desk-bound qualities, had what he wanted: an accommodating, possibly clueless guest in the form of the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese; a common interest in India’s national sport cricket, and a show illuminating him as[Read More…]

(1) Attack,they say,is the best means of defence.And here we take up two arenas where at the moment this adage is most conspicuously in a frenzy of operation.Though poles apart they show the same entities and ideas locked in mortal conflict. First the sentencing of Rahul Gandhi to two years of imprisonment on the charge of ‘having defamed the country’.[Read More…]

Forest and police officials in Telangana seek to evict poor peasnts, adivasis in perticular, fromlands theycultivatedfordecades, notwithsatnding the Forest Rights Act 2005 that assured them of their rights. Led by GPS, peopleareresistingand defending their land rights and right to livelihood Grameena Pedala Sangham (GPS) (Organization of the Rural Poor, TS) is holding its sixth conference on 24th and 25th March,[Read More…]

The BJP’s protests against Rahul Gandhi’s speech in Cambridge are drawing yawns from the general public by now. News-curious folk who have heard snippets of Rahul Gandhi’s speech in Cambridge fail to understand why Parliament is stalled over a speech that does not even remotely endanger or disgrace the country. The curious ones took it upon them to watch the[Read More…]

To Shri Rajiv Gauba Cabinet Secretary Government of India Dear Shri Gauba, I have come across a disturbing news report last evening (https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/centre-recommends-cbi-inquiry-against-activist-harsh-manders-ngo-aman-biradari-3877494#pfrom=home-ndtv_indiatrending) that the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has recommended a CBI inquiry against Aman Biradari, an NGO established by writer and human rights activist, Harsh Mander, for alleged violation of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act. To my mind,[Read More…]

The freedom movement of India to get independence from nearly two centuries of colonialism was one of the most inspiring phases of the history of India. People were motivated to take up very inspirational work and were willing to suffer unending hardships including imprisonment and torture with courageous songs and slogans. This inspirational spirit must be retained even now as[Read More…]

Irrespective of whoever says what about Indian democracy in any part of the world, including India, to what degree should their comments be viewed as dangerous, damaging and/or from any angle threatening for Indian sovereignty, including its democracy? First of all, it is amazing that credibility, worth and strength of Indian democracy is considered weak enough to weaken just by[Read More…]

Writer’s Note—The writer would like to dedicate this article to the memory of Sh. PV Satheesh, who breathed his last today on March 19,  whose great contributions to ecological protection as well as justice in the context of farming will never be forgotten. His work with dalit women farmers has been a source of inspiration for so many good efforts.[Read More…]

I am profoundly shocked and dumb-founded at Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju’s reported remarks about certain retired Supreme Court judges having joined a gang of anti-nationals and started among other things to criticise the highest court in the land.(Indian Express,19th March)They are also warned of possible consequences. This comes close enough to the scene that Rahul Gandhi had conjured in[Read More…]

On March 11 the leader of the Bharat Rashtra Samiti and daughter of the Telangana State Chief Minister, K Kavitha was questioned for nine hours by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the Delhi liquor policy case. Manish Sisodia, the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, and a prominent leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was arrested in late February by[Read More…]

There are philosophers who can argue you into a corner where meaning itself becomes meaningless and reason an endless self-deception,to their own vast self-satisfaction.In this country current turn of events has brought us to a situation where you find reason itself being put to tasks that cancel one another out. Rahul Gandhi on his return has been the target of[Read More…]

Condemn the undemocratic action of state and Delhi Police to cancel the CASR’s program titled “Media Blackout and State Repression in Kashmir”. Campaign Against State Repression strongly condemns Delhi Police’s action of pressurizing the management of Gandhi Peace Foundation in form of notice by IP Estate Police Station and cancelling the event titled “Media Blackout and State Repression in Kashmir”[Read More…]

There is increasing evidence that resistance to colonial and feudal exploitation by Bheel tribal communities increased significantly during the decade 1912-22, leading to extreme forms of repression by the British forces supported by princely kingdoms, culminating in at least two, perhaps more, massacres whose death toll is most likely to have been in excess of the Jalianwala Bagh massacre. Around[Read More…]

As atrocities against Muslim minorities increase and the news comes in that various Muslim leaders and intellectuals are knocking the doors of RSS for a dialogue, what do we make of it? A brief peep into the past may help us understand the current dilemmas of Muslim community. The partition of India left the Indian Muslims in a precarious position.[Read More…]

There is increasing need for at least seven important reforms in India’s democracy. First and foremost, there is urgent need for the government to be more protective towards minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians, who have been feeling less secure in recent times. The government has a constitutional duty to ensure that there is no discrimination on the basis of faith[Read More…]

Vaagdhara is one of the few voluntary organizations in the country which has centered its work around the vision of swaraj—or self-rule based on increasing self-reliance of rural communities. It has worked with this vision for nearly two decades in the tri-junction area of three states—Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, with most concentration in South Rajasthan (particularly Banswara district). This[Read More…]

To Shri Rajiv Kumar Chief Election Commissioner   Shri A C Pandey Election Commissioner   Shri A Goel Election Commissioner   Dear S/Shri Rajiv Kumar/ Pandey and Goel, I write this letter to highlight the Commission’s double standards in applying the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), one for the influential and another for the disadvantaged. The migrant Chenchus of Visakhapatnam: The[Read More…]

Indian Federation of Trade Unions staged a rally in Nawarshara town in Punjab, challenging fascist dictates of the Narendra Modi led BJP imposed on the working class. Around 600 persons participated. Aparna adressed the gathering on how it was imperative for workers and labourers to unite to confront the enstranglement of the corporates .She summarised the brutal attacks on the[Read More…]

Basanta Utsav is held each year in the month of March on the Full moon day of Falgun. Spring is welcomed through music and dances. It literally means the ‘celebration of spring’. The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, at Vishwabharati Shantiniketan, the University founded by him. Actually, Basanta Utsav[Read More…]

In village Manguwal in Sangrur a contingent of dalit agricultural labourers embarked on a protest, under the leadership of the Zameen prapt sangarsh commitee.  The issue was on the denial of place to throw away trash For over 60 years the dalit labourers of Manguwal have relentlessly battled for rights promised to them for procuring panchayat land. However the capitalist[Read More…]

Anandpuri block in Banswara district (Rajasthan) is known for high concentration of tribal communities, particularly Bhil communities. Their traditional livelihood and farming patterns based on biodiversity and self-reliance were well-suited to local conditions, but these suffered under exploitative systems of colonial times. Freedom from colonial rule brought some relief, but the dominant development thinking still neglected special needs, conditions and[Read More…]

The PIL Watch Group watches with concern the events unfolding in Punjab. Consequent to the opinion expressed publicly by the police officials, central intelligence agencies, public figures on the recent developments in Punjab pertaining to release of an accused from judicial custody ostensibly due to protest demonstration (at Ajnala police station, near Amritsar) organised by a newly formed outfit ‘Waris[Read More…]

Given the importance accorded by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to electoral results of Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura as not simply its “success” but more as marking major defeat of Congress, one is tempted to analyse these from this angle itself. Of these, perhaps the most important is the trend displayed by Meghalaya polls. The importance given by BJP to this[Read More…]

Women farmers of Neemkhera village (Niwari district and block, Madhya Pradesh) gather near their ancient water tank built during the times of Chandel kings several centuries earlier. Most of them are very small farmers, owning one to three acres of land or even less, yet the work they have taken up is not small, it is big. This work is[Read More…]

  “After the introduction of the New Economic Industrial Policy, public industries were privatized all over the country, the national wealth was looted by the big capital houses and the rights of the workers were attacked. Whichever party was in government, it curtailed the rights of the workers and worked to abolish the laws made in the interests of the[Read More…]