2020

MUSINGS – October 14, 2020
What’s been happening! Fake speeches. Fake political promises. Fake TRP ratings!
How can one survive in this polluted atmosphere? Never before this range of deceit around! And in the midst of this hellish scenario, the grim reality of rapes of human forms and psyches is on at such an accelerating cum alarming pace that one wonders what’s going to be the end result of these onslaughts and assaults and ruptures and tortures.
Correct me if I’m wrong but we (…)

by Dr Ashok Kumar Sahay *
City planning is a highly complex process that tries to capture the necessities of life in all its variety. This is beyond the comprehension of a single individual or agency and calls for the widest kind of participation. Cities have a wealth of talent and experience. Given the complexity of city life, participatory planning immediately enriches the process and quality of plans if such talent, experience, and insights to feed into them. For the civic (…)

written by Roberto Zanini
“Snatch and grab, man. Grab the fuckin’ Governor. Just grab the bitch. Because at that point, we do that, dude — it’s over.”
These were the words of Adam Fox, a white militiaman at the head of a group with a ridiculous name, the Wolverine Watchmen, who had been planning a very serious project for months: to kidnap the Democratic Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer.
They planned to kidnap her, subject her to a mock trial and probably kill her, while an (…)

China insists Genghis Khan exhibit not use words ’Genghis Khan’
Museum in Nantes pulls show after intervention by Beijing, which comes as Communist party hardens discrimination against ethnic Mongols
Agence France-Presse
Wed 14 Oct 2020
A French museum has postponed an exhibit about the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan citing interference by the Chinese government, which it accuses of trying to rewrite history.
The Château des ducs de Bretagne history museum in the western city of (…)

* Letter to the Readers - Mainstream, October 10, 2020
* How safe are Dalit women in Uttar Pradesh | SR Darapuri
* Culture of Rape | Sukumaran C.V.

We live in a very violent, callous and brutalised society. We didn’t become a violent country only after the arrival of the Right-wing conservative government of the BJP led by Narendra Modi in 2014. There is a long pre-history of everyday violence, deep sexism and misogyny in our homes and outside. Every violent moment has sexual undertones in India. The violent crime and the state response in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh (UP) is just one instance in a long series.
Where do we begin? But just (…)

by S. R. Darapuri
Recently Crime in India - 2019 report has been released by National Crime Records Bureau. In this report, in the year 2019, the statistics of crime of Dalit atrocities have been published for the whole country. It has emerged that Uttar Pradesh is far ahead in this. The Dalit population of Uttar Pradesh (UP) is the largest population in the country, which is 20.7% percent of the Scheduled Castes population of India. According to the report, in the year 2019, a total of (…)

It almost seems as if rape is the favorite pastime of the males of this country.—Saraswati Haider.
Three women including a well-known dubbing artist in the capital city of Kerala have physically attacked or manhandled (the correct usage is womanhandled) a man for a video he has uploaded on YouTube in which he talks indecent, obscene and abominable things about women.
It was really nauseating to hear his obscene talk. His indecent blabbering about the feminists in general and in (…)

by Chittarvu Raghu
The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 was enacted with the main objective to protect marginalised communities viz. schedule castes and tribes against discrimination and atrocities. Sec.3 of the said Act enunciates the nature of various acts committed against a scheduled caste or a scheduled tribe to constitute an offence punishable under the said Act. The said provision stipulates that any act which is derogatory to human dignity (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Rajput strongman Ajay Mohan Bisht was voted twice in two years as the nation’s best chief minister. Bisht is none else but the chief of a Hindu math, a yogi, a person who has supposedly renounced earthly luxuries, the materialism, in Gorakhpur of Uttar Pradesh with a number of criminal cases against him. Ever since he became the chief minister of UP he has been donning controversies for his unsavoury actions.
With the opposition in Uttar Pradesh behaving like a maid (…)