2022

Press Statement by National Secretariat of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) on 13 January 2022
Central Government’s Vi settlement is criminal
Reports appearing in the newspapers (IE, 12.01.2022) regarding the Central Government converting Rs.16000 Cr interest dues from Vi (Vodafone Idea) into equity shares are shocking.
It was known that Vi owed the Government Rs.58254 Cr as Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) alone, plus penal interest for late payment. The operators (Vodafone (…)

by Aishwarya Bhuta *
Prof. Avijit Pathak is a sociologist, educationist, and one of the most authentic thinkers in Indian academia. He is a former professor at the Centre for Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He joined the University in March 1990 and has recently retired after 31 years of teaching. The first time I saw Prof. Pathak was when I went to seek my admission at the Jawaharlal Nehru University for an MA in Development and Labour Studies in July 2019. I was (…)

by Kaylin Kim
Despite being the first archer in Olympic history to win three gold medals at a single Games, An San received thousands of hate comments online. She was criticised not for her performance at the 2020 Olympics, but because of her short haircut and enrolment at Kwangju Women’s University. Commentors accused An of being a feminist, a label that is stigmatised by many South Koreans who associate the term with hating men.
A man who attend a rally in celebration of International (…)

* The Year of Fear | John Dayal
* Challenges to the Narendra Modi Government in 2022 | P S Jayaramu
* Rajput Sodhas suffer due to India-Pakistan visa issues | Beena Sarwar
* Audio: Knowing Nature - conversation with Profs Vinita Damodaran and Harriet Ritvo

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, January 8, 2022
It’s been many years now that there is growing social and political tolerance, for a culture of violence that has come to include vigilantism, lynchings, sexual assault and hateful public speeches calling for ethnic cleansing or communal violence, intimidation of critics, acts of vandalism against places of prayer of minorities, etc by some members of India’s ruling party, or political groupings claiming allegiance to Hindutva or other (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Now that 2022 is two days old, how are things fanning out? Too early to say, perhaps. But the usual tendency to decry the old and welcome the new is not as strong as in previous New Year seasons. The sense of bad days is persisting. Optimism is being diluted by continuing setbacks. There have been 3.48 crore Corona cases during the year with 4.8 lakh deaths. And there are no signs of things easing up.
One reason for this is the overwhelming importance of (…)

It has been a year of fear.
The trauma of mass deaths in Covid, the bodies floating down the holy River Ganges or waiting hours for their turn at cremation grounds, has not faded.
By the end of the year, the fear of death by a pandemic disease is perhaps replaced by a pit in the stomach for being butchered by a religious and nationalist fanatic mob whose baying was heard on Christmas Day.
The politician, the government official, the police will look on, helpless or in complicit (…)

by P.S. Jayaramu (28th December 2021)
The year 2021 was a mixed bag for the Modi Government if one looks at it from a liberal angle. A mixed bag because the first half of the year saw the second wave of the covid-19 pandemic, leading to a heavy caseload and deaths. The government, obsessed as it was with the Bengal assembly elections paid little heed to the forecasts of the health experts about the severity of the covid pandemic. Government’s unpreparedness to deal with the crisis (…)

Meghalaya Governor Satya Pal Malik’s stand has not softened even after the government withdrew three controversial agri-laws. Speaking at a social function in Haryana’s Charkhi Dadri town on January 2, he said that when he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the question of farmers’ agitation and raised the issue of the death of 500 farmers, the PM’s attitude was arrogant. He also said that their meeting ended in an argument. In other words, Malik conveyed the message that he went to the (…)

On the morning of January 1, in Dadam area of Bhiwani district, Haryana, a huge portion of a hill being mined for its stone fell down with a very loud blast. The death of 3 workers was reported soon after this. Serious concern has been expressed that a higher number of workers may have been buried under big stones. What could be seen be immediately was that the stones which fell from a big height were so huge that several dumper truck and machines were buried under this. What is not yet (…)