2022

by Thomas Rowley
6 January 2022
London is home to some £530m in luxury property owned by the country’s ruling class
Protests in Kazakhstan started quietly this week. A sudden increase in the price of liquefied petroleum gas, popular as a secondary fuel for its low cost, sparked public meetings in towns in western Kazakhstan, the home of the country’s natural resources sector.
But five days later, and the system built since the 1990s by Kazakhstan’s first family, the Nazarbayevs, and (…)

by David Graeber
2013
In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs (…)

* An Archeology of Development | Debal Deb
* Making Mockery of the Electoral Process | Arun Srivastava
* Narratives of Female Sex Workers from ’Tawaif Mandi’, Bihar | Baby Kumari
* Repeal of farm laws: A win to celebrate the power of the people | Geeta Sinha
* The Irresistible Bell Hooks: A Tribute | Avijit Pathak

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Jan 1, 2022
Over the past two weeks there have been reports from the state of Punjab of public lynching’s in the name of so-called sacrilege at Sikh places of worship … but leaders of political parties from across the political spectrum have been silent or have refrained from condemning mob justice. Call’s by Punjab’s State Congress chief Navjot Sidhu’s for public execution of the so-called sacrilege accused are extremely shocking. That sort of thing has (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Year-end pushes the world into introspection. There is a predictable style in which this is done. The year that is ending is dismissed as a bad one and the new year is welcomed as the harbinger of all things wonderful. To complicate things further, assessment of the year is culture-based. What American culture considers all important may be dismissed as irrelevant by those who follow Indian culture.
Indian Culture? Can there be such a thing when Narendra Modi’s (…)

by Minakshi Biswas *
Switzerland has recently provided a legal validity to the death machine which has been designed by Dr. Philip Nitschke, popularly known as Dr. Death in the country. Sarco, the death machine which has had two prototypes until now has passed the legal test of being available for usage by prospective people in need of assisted dying by next year. Although assisted death and dying has been made permissible in various countries including Switzerland, the use of a machine (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Move to address long-pending electoral reforms like having a common electoral roll for the Lok Sabha, Vidhan Sabha and local government bodies (panchayats or municipal) could be appreciated but there is absolutely dearth of justifiable rationale to link electoral rolls with Aadhaar.
Ever since Narendra Modi has become the prime minister of the country, the RSS has adopted the proactive stance to subvert the executive and constitutional functioning. RSS and Modi have (…)

MUSINGS - December 22, 2021
Call it a mere formality or an ongoing dastoor, as the year ends and the new year takes off, one is supposed to take note of the positive highlights. Well, for the last several hours, I have been thinking, mind you thinking very hard, on any of the positives of 2021 but sadly nothing came up! Not a single thing that stands out or impresses.
Nah, new airports or highways don’t hold out, as only a very small percentage of our citizens can actually make use of (…)

by Baby Kumari
“Prashasan gali deta hai, kehta hai...re madarchod, lipstick laga ke khadi hai, jao bhago ynha se randi” [Administration abuses us, they say, “You mother-fucker, you have put on lipstick to entertain your customer, go away from here you whore] (Naseema, 35 years)
The above narration address the ‘Stigma’ that FSWs (Female Sex Workers) at Tawaif-mandi, Chaturbhujsthan, Muzaffarpur have to face in their everyday life. Nassema’s narration suggests that their make-up, gestures, (…)

The recent repeal of the farm laws by the central government sets an example which re-assures the power in people’s voices entrusted in democratic values, processes and practices. It is a win to celebrate and remember that such authoritarian governance and policies can be overthrown with people’s solidarity, vision, perseverance, and resilience. In India, the farmers and their families protested for more than a year. The protests and demonstrations were against the government’s new farm laws (…)