2022

by Jörg Nowak *
After a tough campaign, centrist candidate Lula da Silva of the Workers Party (PT) won the second and final round of the Brazilian presidential election on October 30 with 50.9 percent of the vote, 2.1 million votes more than his extreme-right adversary Jair Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL).
This was the closest result for a Brazilian presidential election since 1989. Lula promised a return to democracy and normality in his victory speech on the packed Avenida Paulista (…)

by Sunil Ray *
I
Introduction
The 21st century made its beginning with a shift of geographies of reasons for reorganizing the principles of the economic and social life of humanity in the world. It is a new site in the making, unparallel in the history of the contemporary world, in the wake of the social movements against globalization that have been shaking several parts of the world for the past two decades or so. While epistemic disobedience (Mignolo, 2011: 44) is built into these (…)

Radical Socialist (RS) strongly opposes the SC judgement upholding the BJP government’s policy proposal to enable 10% quota reservations for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in Central government public sector employment and for access in its higher educational institutions. This judgement further enables state governments to do the same if they wish. Given that a host of non-BJP parties---one of the few exceptions being the DMK---have welcomed this judgement, the states they rule will try (…)

Communist Party of India Central Office New Delhi
November 8, 2022
Press Release
Refer SC Verdict on Reservation for EWS to Full Bench: CPI
The National Secretariat of the Communist Party of India issued the following statement today (on November 8, 2022):
The Supreme Court judgment upholding 10 per cent reservation for EWS category by a five-member bench with three upholding and two expressing dissent has raised several questions regarding the very policy of reservations. (…)

The Editors Guild of India
PRESS STATEMENT
November 8th, 2022
The Editors Guild of India takes strong exception to the arbitrary act by the Governor of Kerela, Mr. Arif Mohammad Khan, of expelling journalists of two news channels from a press conference that was organised in Kochi on November 7, 2022.
Mr. Khan expelled journalists of news channels Kairali TV and MediaOne TV from the press briefing and started interacting with the media only after the representatives of the two (…)

The Unlikely Secret Agent
by Ronnie Kasrils
Monthly Review Press Pages: 183 Price: $14.95 Paperback ISBN: 9781583672778 eBook ISBN: 9781583672792
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She could have led a privileged life as a white during the apartheid regime but she chose to risk everything to plunge into the struggle to build a new South Africa. She had a frail look but the soft-spoken, dainty woman had the heart of a lion. This gripping book is a well-deserved tribute to Eleanor Kasrils, written with love by her (…)

Book reveiw by Aditya Ramesh*
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Misreading the Bengal Delta: Climate Change, Development, and Livelihoods in Coastal Bangladesh
by Camelia Dewan
University of Washington Press 2021. Illustrations, maps, tables. 254 pp. (cloth) ISBN 978-0-295-74960-0; $30.00 (paper) ISBN 978-0-295-74961-7.
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Frequent headlines emanating from South Asia on extreme weather events are now unmissable, for example, Pakistan’s devastating floods, with some sources estimating a third of the (…)

* Review of Study on Bangalore’s Street Sex Workers | Deepti Priya Mehrotra
* Struggles in Southasia raised at 4th Asma Jahangir Conference | Abdullah Zahid with Beena Sarwar
* Far right: The significance of an umbrella concept | Andrea L P Pirro

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Nov 5, 2022
The Constitution of India treats all citizens on an equal footing and included in its ‘Directive Principles’ an important guidance exhorting the state to strive to bring a common law in the personal domain for all its citizens irrespective of differences of faith. Leading statesmen in the founding years of our republic Jawaharlal Nehru and B R Ambedkar had forcefully argued in favour of such a common secular law. But decades on matters related (…)

All India Trade Union Congress
02nd November 2022
All India Trade Union Congress sends its deepest condolences on the demise of Ela Bhatt, a Gandhian, labour rights activist and the founder of self employed Women’s Association (SEWA). She [was] 86 and remained actively associated with SEWA activities till very recently. Her death is a loss to the labour rights movement in India. AITUC dips its flag in salute and honour of Ela Bhatt and shares the agony of the bereaved members of her (…)