2022

Women’s Regional Network
Statement Condemns Taliban’s Ban of Female Students from Universities in Afghanistan
On December 20, 2022, the Taliban announced a new edict banning girls from higher education. Women’s Regional Network (WRN) condemn the ban of female students from University Education. This decision of the Taliban against girls and women in Afghanistan demonstrates that the regime deliberately and systematically erases women by implementing gender-apartheid policies. While the (…)

Statement from Foreign Ministers on Taliban Decision to Ban Women from Universities (21 Dec. 2022)
The Foreign Ministers of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States and the High Representative for the European Union strongly condemn the Taliban’s recent decisions to ban women from universities, to continue to bar girls from secondary schools, and to impose other harsh restrictions on the ability (…)

Reviewed by Stig Thøgersen (Aarhus University)
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Harbin: A Cross-Cultural Biography
by Mark Gamsa
University of Toronto Press
2022. 394 pp.
ISBN 978-1-4875-4424-9.
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This ambitious book runs along three parallel tracks. It tells the history of the city of Harbin in northeastern China; it gives an account of the life of Baron Roger Budberg, a physician with Russian citizenship who spent most of his life in that city; and it discusses, from several angles, the (…)

* Tribute to Gita Ramaswamy | Anand Chakravarti
* Results of 2022 Assembly Elections in Gujarat & Himachal | P Jayaramu
* Crony Capitalism System Perfected | Sandeep Pandey
* How the brain tunes in to unfamiliar voices during sleep | Jakke Tamminen

GUEST EDITORIAL
One thing one can safely say about Narendra Modi without fearing any contradiction from any quarter is that he despises the past. Not just his past, about which this is not the proper forum to discuss but the Indian nation’s past and I am not talking about the medieval/Mughal past, which no graduate from his alma mater the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) make any bones about acknowledging. But the past of modern India, or rather independent India. And so he is determined (…)

by Anand Chakravarti
Introduction: Why Am I Writing This Piece?
Fundamentally, it is an exercise in self-criticism because it charts the politics of a person who devoted a part of her life to serving the marginalized — which I also aspired to do, but failed. Gita Ramaswamy’s book, by presenting a model of selfless work and the inherent challenges, shows that it requires exceptional commitment to bridge the gulf that separates noble aspirations from the practise of a mode of existence (…)

by SS Sangwan *
November 24, 2022
Introduction to the Problem
It has been brought out by various surveys and studies that the students of private school have higher test scores than those of government school (UNESCO, 2022; Goyal S., 2009; Fench and Kingdon, 2010; Murlidharan, 2013; Singh, 2015 and Kumar and Kumar, 2021). Besides, private schools provide better environment of security, co-curricular activities, programmes for admission in higher institutions and job placement. Hence, (…)

Abstract
This paper analyses the agitation of fishers in the Vizhinjam port area in Kerala to understand the context, issues, and nature of the protest and how it can be seen as a part of the livelihood protection movement by the fishers based on a critique of the neoliberal model of big development. It also discusses the leadership role of the Latin Catholic church and the metaphors and symbolisms used to legitimate and garner support for the agitation. The paper ends by proposing the (…)

I
Supreme Court Raises Extremely Important Questions on GM Mustard
Bharat Dogra
On December 1, in the on-going case relating to objections raised against the introduction of the first GM (genetically modified) food crop in the form of GM Mustard in India, the Supreme Court raised some important questions. As reported in The Times of India (December 2, 2022), “A bench of Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and BV Nagarathna told Attorney General R.Venkataramani, appearing for the Centre, that (…)

by P. S. Jayaramu
12th December, 2022
The much-awaited Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly election results were out a few days ago. It is time to reflect on the results as a whole.
Let me take up the Gujarat polls first. As part of its missionary zeal to win elections, the the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got into the election mode nearly an year ago, with the Party President J P Nadda and Prime Minister Narendra Modi making periodic visits to the State to prepare the ground for (…)