Mainstream Weekly

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  Table of Contents - Mainstream, Sept 9, 2023

  9 September 2023

  * Text of 25th D S Borker Lecture by Justice AP Shah
  * Editors’s Guild of India Report on Media’s Reportage of the Ethnic Violence in Manipur
  * How folk remedies can fuel misinformation | Donois & Vally
  * Photo: The Mother’s Hand (1966) by Antanas Sutkus

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Sept 9, 2023

  9 September 2023

  Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Sept 9, 2023
  New Delhi is hosting the G-20 summit from 8 - 10 September, 2023, its preparations have drowned the city into a spectacle of garish, flashy, and kitsch. A big militarised ‘beautification’ for G20 in Delhi by erasing the labouring poor from public view, large-scale demolitions of slums & homeless shelters, or erecting screens to hide slums has what has happened. The city is nearly shut, pretty unlike such summits elsewhere. Roadside (…)

• My Vision of India: 2047 | Justice AP Shah (25th Borker Memorial Lecture)

  9 September 2023

  * This is the text of the 25th D. S. Borker Memorial Lecture delivered by the author at the India International Centre, New Delhi on 24 August 2023. * D. S. Borker was a distinguished civil servant in whose memory the D S Borker Memorial Lecture Series on “My Vision of India: 2047” has been instituted. * Justice A. P. Shah is the former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court and former Chairman of the 20th Law Commission of India.
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  My Vision of India: 2047
  by Justice AP Shah (…)

• As laws expand their reach in India, political freedoms shrink | Anushka Singh

  9 September 2023

  Laws restricting basic freedoms may be made in the name of public order and national security, but they are often used against dissident voices.
  Three bills were tabled, which dates back to the colonial era. The Bill to replace the IPC features 175 amended sections, eight new additions and the repeal of 22 sections, including the section on sedition.
  The proposed legislation raises questions about whether colonial laws alone are responsible for the shrinking of democratic freedoms in (…)

• Court Handbook: A Step Forward for Gender Just Society | Ram Kumar Thakur, Kaushiki Arha

  9 September 2023

  The Supreme Court of India under Chief Justice, Justice D. Y Chandrachud recently released a landmark document titled Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes. The handbook is supposed to serve as dossier of referral for judges and legal fraternity as a whole for confronting gendered stereotypes. The handbook opens us up to a progressive legal dialogue on acknowledging the essentialised and prejudiced understanding of gender in both latent and manifest terms. The document places the onus of (…)

• Promote communal harmony, instead of abetting its deterioration - Letter to the Chief Minister of Haryana | Binoy Viswam

  9 September 2023, by Binoy Viswam

  Binoy Viswam Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) 116, North Avenue New Delhi - 110 001 Mob: 9605766702 E-mail: binoyviswam55[at]gmail.com
  To, Shri Manohar Lal Khattar, Chief Minister, Government of Haryana
  Date: 28th August, 2023
  Respected Shri Manohar Lal Khattar Ji,
  I write to you to raise my serious concerns regarding the prevailing situation in certain districts of Haryana and your government’s handling of the it. Communal riots erupted in Haryana following the announcement of (…)

• Security, integrity secondary to BJP’s communal considerations in J&K and Manipur | Faraz Ahmad

  9 September 2023, by Faraz Ahmad

  It is now abundantly clear that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP government have no intention of restoring Article 370 and 35A through which our Constitution framers gave certain special distinctive powers to the people of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Ladakh which Modi abrogated with one stroke of his pen on August 6, 2019, but even the Supreme Court appeared disinclined to restore status quo ante in the newly created twin union territories of J&K and Ladakh, never mind the (…)

• Modi acts in accordance with the directions and desires of RSS chief | Arun Srivastava

  9 September 2023

  Vishwa Hindu Parishad heralding its rebirth and reinventing itself after so many years by taking out a rally in Nuh of Haryana, should not be perceived as a simple move to revive the Hindu outfit, instead, it ought to be grasped in a wider political setting. The VHP had already taken out a Jalabhishek Yatra on July 31, but it had to be abandoned midway after violence broke out after the participants targeted the Muslims. Once again VHP announced their plan to resume the yatra on August 28 in (…)

• Unrealised Aspirations: The Common School System & the Quest for Equitable Education in India | Jain, Sengar and Pandey

  9 September 2023

  A Gujarat government Indian Administrative Service officer Dhaval Patel after visiting six primary schools in Chhota Udepur district among the tribal area made the following observation: ‘These poor tribal children do not have any other source of education. It is my strong opinion that we are doing injustice to them by giving them this rotten education. We are ensuring that they continue doing labour work generation after generation and not move forward in life. This is the height of moral (…)

• These Small Farmers Have Big Hopes from Natural Farming | Bharat Dogra

  9 September 2023, by Bharat Dogra

  A quiet but significant change has come over the remote village of Bahera (in Niwari district of Madhya Pradesh) in recent times. More and more villagers are involved in intense discussions on natural farming. In fact even farmers from neighboring villages have been coming over to look at the demonstration plots of natural farming and at the multi-layer vegetable gardens and fruit trees grown using natural farming methods. The verdict on these discussions is most often favorable for natural (…)