Articles by: Samar

Muzaffarpur: Children suffering from Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) being treated at a hospital in Muzaffarpur, Monday, June 17, 2019. Bihar's Muzaffarpur district is reeling under an outbreak of the disease, taking the death toll to atleast 100 children. (PTI Photo)(PTI6_17_2019_000207B)

What’s the score: 100 children dead and counting, sir

How many wickets- asked Mangal Pandey, Health Minister of Bihar during a press conference to know the current status of India Pakistan clash in the ongoing Cricket World Cup. It is just that he asked the question in the middle of a meeting of health department to tackle the outbreak of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) in the state which has[Read More…]

by 19/06/2019 Comments are Disabled India
 Outlawed practice of manual scavenging sees a fourfold growth

 Outlawed practice of manual scavenging sees a fourfold growth

Growth has remained the buzzword in Indian polity for decades now. It started after the unprecedented economic crisis that the country faced in early 1990s and never really went away after that. It, rather, almost consumed the other big word- development, which now returns to election rallies and then disappears again until the next elections. Ironically, overuse of the concept[Read More…]

by 26/06/2018 1 comment Human Rights
Future Imperfect-Hungrier and indebted than ever before

Future Imperfect-Hungrier and indebted than ever before

Despite all the tall claims of development by authorities in India, the data from Government bodies shows that there are little, if any, improvements in tackling alarmingly high levels of malnutrition. Add to this the worrisome fact of a sharp increase in the indebtedness of households and the situation becomes even bleaker. The data from the National Family Health Survey[Read More…]

by 16/05/2018 2 comments India
Suicide By A Hungry Teen In The Times Of $ 1.7 Billion Loot By Tycoons

Suicide By A Hungry Teen In The Times Of $ 1.7 Billion Loot By Tycoons

In other times Jyoti could have gotten at least a little outrage for her, often all poor and the marginalized get in the country after such tragedies inflicted upon them. Alas, the country is busy over outraging the USD 1.7 billion fraud, and counting, that the Punjab National Bank has complained Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi of committing against it.[Read More…]

by 01/03/2018 1 comment Human Rights
New Delhi: Farmers display fruits and vegetables at the Kisan Mukti Sansad, organised to highlight the farmers' issues, in New Delhi on Monday. PTI Photo by Atul Yadav  (PTI11_20_2017_000103B)

Protesting Farmers Hold Their Parliament, Pass Bills As The  Real One Looks Away

More than 3 lakh suicides in three decades and millions of other lives ruined would qualify as a national disaster forcing the government to tackle it all guns blazing in any democracy. Alas, it does not in the one that claims to be the largest of them all, the democracies. In fact it hardly gets registered even as a minor[Read More…]

by 21/11/2017 2 comments India
AADHAR- Starving The Poor To Death As The Supreme Court Looks Away

AADHAR- Starving The Poor To Death As The Supreme Court Looks Away

  Shakina Ashfaq, 50, is the latest life claimed by the AADHAR, the name given to the 12-digit unique identification (UID) number by the government of India. The reports suggest that she died of hunger. The authorities, as is unsaid standard operating procedure, claim that preliminary inquiries suggest that she didn’t die of hunger, she rather died of some illness.[Read More…]

by 17/11/2017 Comments are Disabled India
Arbitrary Detention Of Mr. Chandrashekhar Ravan Makes A Mockery Of The Rule Of Law By The UP State Government

Arbitrary Detention Of Mr. Chandrashekhar Ravan Makes A Mockery Of The Rule Of Law By The UP State Government

Mr. Chandrashekhar Ravan, the founder of the Bhim Army remains in custody despite the Allahabad High Court granting him bail in all the cases registered against him. Ravan is in custody because of the Government of Uttar Pradesh has registered a case against him under the provisions of the draconian, National Security Act, 1980. The NSA provides for ‘preventive detention’,[Read More…]

by 14/11/2017 1 comment Annihilate Caste, Human Rights
Ominous Arrests Point At Imminent Rule Of The Outlaw In Uttar Pradesh

Ominous Arrests Point At Imminent Rule Of The Outlaw In Uttar Pradesh

The arrests of 31 Dalit activists in Lucknow, state capital of Uttar Pradesh, is an ominous marker of the things to come. Add the circumstances of their arrest and they also hint at an authoritarian regime lurching around, set for the takeover of whatever little is left of dissent, democracy and the rule of law in the state. The arrests[Read More…]

by 06/07/2017 2 comments Human Rights
Weed Out The Rogues In Uniform Rather Than Trivialising Rape

Weed Out The Rogues In Uniform Rather Than Trivialising Rape

‘Why do armed women cut off a particular organ of Indian soldiers engaged in combating armed insurgencies across India, be it Punjab, Kashmir, Arunachal, Assam, Bengal or Jharkhand?’ asked senior opposition leader Azam Khan. The insinuation was unmistakable, and it had a basis: armed Maoists had indeed chopped off private parts of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel slain in their latest big ambush[Read More…]

by 04/07/2017 2 comments Human Rights
Modi’s Govt ‘stain-less’ Amidst Bloodstains On The Streets?

Modi’s Govt ‘stain-less’ Amidst Bloodstains On The Streets?

‘There are no stains on my government,’ said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his visit to the United States of America. This can only mean that the Prime Minister thinks the bloodstains of innocent Indians are not stains. In actual fact, no one can remember another time when so much blood was spilled in Indian streets. No one can remember[Read More…]

by 29/06/2017 1 comment India
Whither Rights – Of Life, Food, And Everything In Between

Whither Rights – Of Life, Food, And Everything In Between

The recent elections – from civic body elections in Maharashtra to Assembly elections across India – have indeed marked a watershed moment in the life of the Republic. Ironically, they have not done so for the discourse they have produced in the Indian media – discourse ranging from the imminent threat of fascism to sectarian strife. They have marked a[Read More…]

by 01/04/2017 1 comment India
Anti-Romeo Squads Will Arrest Rule Of Law, Not Sexual Violence

Anti-Romeo Squads Will Arrest Rule Of Law, Not Sexual Violence

First, the facts. Yes, crimes against women are a major problem in Uttar Pradesh. As per the data of the National Crime Records Bureau, the state has the dubious distinction of being the most unsafe Indian state for women in 2015 despite losing ‘top rank’ in number of rapes reported, to Madhya Pradesh, followed by Maharashtra. Further, the state lost[Read More…]

by 28/03/2017 Comments are Disabled Patriarchy
Another Adivasi Student Suicide Marks Rohith Vemula’s Death Anniversary

Another Adivasi Student Suicide Marks Rohith Vemula’s Death Anniversary

Rohith Vemula’s suicide a year ago shook the country. The circumstances of his death left no doubt that it was an institutional murder committed through continuous harassment, and not a simple suicide. It exposed how the culture of caste discrimination was alive and kicking in Indian campuses despite being outlawed by the Constitution. Though it was no secret even before[Read More…]

by 18/01/2017 3 comments Annihilate Caste
Farmlands ‘Developed’ A Bit More Into Farmer Graveyards In 2015

Farmlands ‘Developed’ A Bit More Into Farmer Graveyards In 2015

How does one deal with a 42% spike in suicides by farmers/cultivators in a country where “development” has been the buzzword for the last couple of years? If the question isn’t creepy enough to send a shiver down one’s spine, consider that “Bankruptcy or Indebtedness” and “Farming Related Issues”, i.e. non-personal reasons, account for 58.2% of these suicides. No pretensions[Read More…]

by 05/01/2017 3 comments India
Trying Misogyny Welcome, But How About Curbing All Crimes Against Women?

Trying Misogyny Welcome, But How About Curbing All Crimes Against Women?

It is fourth anniversary of 16 December 2012, the brutal gang rape and murder of a student in Delhi that shook the conscience of the nation and led to unprecedented protests against sexual violence across India. Crime against women has been common in India, as has been the support for such crime in the form of misogynist statements by those[Read More…]

by 18/12/2016 1 comment Patriarchy
Demonetisation, Proverbial Last Nail In The Coffin Of Already Beleaguered Peasantry

Demonetisation, Proverbial Last Nail In The Coffin Of Already Beleaguered Peasantry

Putting the cacophonous debate on the merits and demerits of demonetisation of Rs 500 and 1000 currency notes aside, there is no doubt over it having hit the farmers all set to go for Rabi crops sowing hardest. Almost entirely dependent upon cash transactions for everything from buying seeds to fertilisers, the move has ended up turning their earnings into[Read More…]

by 19/11/2016 1 comment India
Bhopal Encounter Killings And Rule Of Law

Bhopal Encounter Killings And Rule Of Law

The fact that the Madhya Pradesh state government has shed even the pretence of fair-trial, a cornerstone of the rule of law, has emerged as the only uncontested truth four days after the incredulous police encounter that resulted in the killing of 8 under-trial jail escapees. The circumstances of the reported jailbreak from the supposedly highest security prison in the[Read More…]

by 07/11/2016 1 comment Human Rights, India
A Democracy That Discriminates And Disgraces Citizens Even In Death

A Democracy That Discriminates And Disgraces Citizens Even In Death

Unable to pay the ambulance drivers INR 1500, or around USD 22, a young mother was forced to sit out the night with her child’s dead body outside a hospital in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut district. This happened less than two weeks after a nationwide outrage over the ordeal of a tribal man named Dana Majhi thousands of kilometers away, in[Read More…]

by 09/09/2016 3 comments Human Rights, India
Modi Says “Shoot”! But Whom?

Modi Says “Shoot”! But Whom?

Narendra Modi’s high octane poll campaign was littered with the promise of Development, with a capital D. Big business, in India and abroad, had bought his promise too. And now, after a little more than 2 years old premiership, the developments under his watch have rattled most of them. The ‘developments’ were not the “development” they were looking for. Further,[Read More…]

by 08/08/2016 3 comments India
New York Times Calls Modi’s Silence “Shameful”

New York Times Calls Modi’s Silence “Shameful”

  One doesn’t often see a respected international media house asking a democratic republic’s prime minister to break his silence in an editorial. Even more rare is it to see this “silence” tagged with the adjective “shameful”. The New York Times did exactly that today, 4 August 2016. The editorial forewarns Mr. Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, of the bleak[Read More…]

by 05/08/2016 6 comments India
Save Yourselves, Women Of India, As The Republic Will Not

Save Yourselves, Women Of India, As The Republic Will Not

Delhi, the national capital of India, has witnessed another gory incident involving the rape-murder of a minor. This time, a 16-year-old was allegedly raped, strangled, and then set on fire in her own house in East Delhi. The police reportedly tried to pass off the crime as suicide, filing a case of rape and murder only after the autopsy proved[Read More…]

by 02/08/2016 2 comments Patriarchy
Turning Cows Into Man-Eaters  

Turning Cows Into Man-Eaters  

Gujarat is simmering again. Dalits are agitating over criminals indulging in criminality. These criminals, who are fondly referred to as “cow vigilantes” by the mainstream media, have recently stripped and flogged four Dalit youth in Una. The resultant protests have claimed two lives: a policeman has reportedly been killed in stone pelting in Amreli and a youth consumed poison in[Read More…]

by 20/07/2016 1 comment Annihilate Caste
Gang Rape Survivor Gang Raped By The Same Accused Again

Gang Rape Survivor Gang Raped By The Same Accused Again

In a rule of law jurisdiction, the story of a victim of gang rape being raped by the same accused against whom court proceedings continue, might be outlandish. But, in India today, these are the common stories that confront anyone willing to see reality: A Dalit gang rape survivor has allegedly been gang raped again by the same five accused[Read More…]

by 20/07/2016 2 comments Patriarchy
Cow Worshippers Chew Up The Rule Of Law

Cow Worshippers Chew Up The Rule Of Law

A magisterial / judicial order directing the police to register a first information report and investigate a family that lost its provider in a mob lynching would seem impossible for anyone living in a rule of law system. But in the self-designated largest democracy of the world, this is what happened on 14 July 2016. Here is a quick recap[Read More…]

by 17/07/2016 1 comment Human Rights, India
Ruby Rai And The Joke Called Juvenile Justice

Ruby Rai And The Joke Called Juvenile Justice

The Bihar police have arrested Ruby Rai, a 17-year-old girl, under Sections 420, 465, 467, 468, 471, and 120(B) of the India Penal Code on 26 June 2016 and have duly sent her to jail, i.e. an adult jail. Her alleged crime is that of cheating to secure top rank in the state senior secondary school examination. Questioned by a[Read More…]

by 01/07/2016 1 comment Uncategorized
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