2020

A little plastic hollow straw, much like you’d get with you fresh tender coconut or cold rink at a roadside vendor’s, has focused world attention not just on the vagaries of the law of the land and its courts, but even more on the conditions in the prisons in India. It took several weeks for 83 year old Jesuit Stan Swamy - in prison as a mere suspect in a trumped up conspiracy called the Bhima-Koregaon Case, not yet an undertrial, and certainly not a convict - to get the plastic drinking (…)

Something India has never seen before is happening now. Tens of thousands of farmers are on the march. Remarkably, there is no political party behind them, nor any identifiable leader. If ever there was a "people rising" this is it. Spontaneous. Natural. And for those reasons, it is full of power and potential. With 96,000 tractors and 12 million farmers, this is a humongous movement. It is also sensational because the farmers have named Adani and Ambani as their enemies. These names (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Narendra Modi’s intentions ought to be not thrown to the winds. His words that he sincerely intends to serve and help the farmers should be believed. He uttered these words in Kuchch of Gujarat while on a tour to talk to the farmers of the state who include a motely group of Sikh farmers too. But it is his approach to the farmers’ agitation and his attitude towards them that makes one not to believe him.
It was his intention that motivated him to fly to Gujarat, (…)

by Gopal Krishna *
After granting the right to anonymity, the ultimate privilege to the investors and donors of ruling parties, the Indian State wants the right to be absent in the face of cries for social, political and economic injustice in general and for farmers’ demand for justice in particular. What started as seemingly small amendments in the Companies Act in 2002 and 2013 for corporate political donations has emerged as an exercise in rewriting the political and electoral geography (…)

The recent Farm Laws have seen country-wide protests by the farmers. The three new laws - Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, and Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020, are a watershed programme in agriculture, argues the government. It states that farmers will be free from the clutches of middlemen and expand their choices. They can sell their produce (…)

by Isabel Hofmeyr and Charne Lavery
June 7, 2020 - Updated December 6, 2020
On many beaches around the Indian Ocean, keen observers may spot bits of broken pottery. Washed smooth by the ocean, these shards are in all likelihood hundreds of years old, from centres of ceramic production like the Middle Eastern Abbasid caliphate and the Chinese Ming dynasty.
Originally destined for Indian Ocean port cities, this pottery would have been purchased by merchant elites accustomed to eating off (…)

11 December 2020
We are a group of former civil servants belonging to the All India and Central Services who have worked with the Central Government as well as different State Governments of India. As a group, we have no affiliation with any political party but believe in being neutral, impartial and committed to the Constitution of India.
A hugefarmers’ agitation – primarily in Punjab, Haryana, U.P. and Rajasthan – to repeal three new laws has been underway for many months and has been (…)

To Sitaram Yecuhuri General Secretary CPI(M), New Delhi
[December 17, 2020]
Dear comrade
Sub: Three controversial farm bills passed by the Union Govt. Convening a special session of Kerala Legislature to pass a resolution and to frame state laws to protect farmers rights- your immediate intervention requested
The farmers’ agitation against the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act 2020, The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price (…)

by Atanu Sengupta and Asish Kumar Pal *
“Morone Kshoti nai, kintu se somoye jeno ekti snehakorsporso tahar lolate pouchai- jeno ektio koruadro snehomoy mukh dekhite dekhite e jiboner onto hoy. Moribar somoy jeno kaharo ekphota chokher jol dekhia se morite pare “
(“Dying is natural, but at least one loving hand should embrace his forehead at that time- that he should die seeing one face that is filled with sympathy for him. His life should end by seeing at least one drop of water from (…)

by Sankar Ray
The continuous inflow of thousands of people from the erstwhile East Pakistan into eastern India, mainly West Bengal, followed by Assam and Tripura, following a crackdown by military-feudal clique of West Pakistan, led by General Yahya Khan, Pak dictator-in-power in retaliation to the declaration of independence by the Awami League President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman left the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with no choice other than asking the Indian military command to march (…)