Articles by: Arjun Banerjee

The Rising Surveillance State in India 

The Rising Surveillance State in India 

The Delhi, Bengaluru, and Varanasi airports have recently begun the ‘DigiYatra’ service. It is a facial recognition technology (FRT)-based passenger boarding system verified by Aadhar details. Recent news also says that the Western Railways’ use of its FRT-based surveillance system has reduced crime on its routes and stations. Earlier this week, Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said that Mumbai[Read More…]

by 06/12/2022 Comments are Disabled India
Moving towards an unfree internet: The amended IT Rules, 2021 

Moving towards an unfree internet: The amended IT Rules, 2021 

The amended IT Rules, 2021 were notified in end-October this year by MeitY, the electronics and IT ministry of the Indian government. They were withdrawn in June this year after pushback during stakeholder consultations, but even its amended version has not made much of a difference to how it is received. The rules are a clear articulation of the desire[Read More…]

by 13/11/2022 Comments are Disabled India
Haathras Atrocity: Savarna Men Must Speak Up Now!

Haathras Atrocity: Savarna Men Must Speak Up Now!

The horrifically brutal and inhuman act of torture and rape perpetrated by Thakur men on a young Dalit woman in Haathras, Uttar Pradesh, tears at the soul and claws the conscience. It provokes violent thoughts and words and makes it impossible to not imagine a proportional response of the same barbaric extent as the ultimate self-defensive justice. This feeling is[Read More…]

by 30/09/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Dalit Lives Matter, Dalit Rights Matter !

Dalit Lives Matter, Dalit Rights Matter !

Dalit and Bahujan lives, safety, and dignity continue to expendable in Uttar Pradesh (U.P). It is the ideological and geopolitical heartland of the ‘Hindu Rashtra’ model of the political nation-state, and the suppression and relentless alienation of Dalits and Muslims is central to its machinations. U.P was the state with the highest recorded atrocities against Dalits according to NCRB data[Read More…]

by 17/06/2020 Comments are Disabled Annihilate Caste
Demand Justice For Devika’s Institutional Murder

Demand Justice For Devika’s Institutional Murder

On 1 June, 2020, Devika, a Dalit child of fourteen from Kerala committed suicide by burning herself alive for want of a functioning television set on which to continue her studies. And now she is a name, a picture, and a tragic spectacle, like so many that appear and vanish on the mobile phones, flatscreens, and laptops of the upper[Read More…]

by 13/06/2020 1 comment Annihilate Caste
The Lockdown of Caste

The Lockdown of Caste

Caste is an institutional ‘lockdown’ that has existed, developed, and fortified itself in an organic relationship with the material conditions of history. In his pioneering journal Mooknayak, Dr. Ambedkar used a potent metaphor to describe the caste system— a multistoried building with no staircase connecting the floors, in which people live and die in the same floor they were born[Read More…]

by 12/05/2020 1 comment Annihilate Caste