2023

by Kristina Strachov, Saydia Gulrukh, Mushrefa Mishu, Amin Amirul *
Looking back on a corporate crime in Bangladesh that cost over 1,000 lives
The Rana Plaza textile factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed on 24 April 2013, burying some 5,000 people underneath. The day before, cracks had been discovered in the walls of the factory building and the collapse of the eight-storey building was already imminent. Textile workers raised their concerns, but were refused by the factory owner and (…)

by Paul Jackson *
April 21, 2023 A three-day ceasefire to mark the Islamic festival of Eid-al-Fitr in Khartoum appears to be dead in the water as fighting continues in the Sudanese capital. According to the World Health Organization, more than 330 people have been killed over the past week. Now, with reports emerging that arms are being sent from Egypt and Libya, there are growing fears the situation could develop into a civil war that could draw in regional powers.
The violence (…)

Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy (IMSD)
April 28, 2023
PRESS STATEMENT
Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy (IMSD) is shocked by the blatantly anti-women diktat of the spokesman of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, ‘Maulana’ Sajjad Nomani.
In a video clip posted on youtube (https://youtu.be/tyO5E8MgQEQ), the influential cleric with a large following among Muslims across the country can be seen and heard issuing the edict: “Do not send your girls to college unaccompanied, (…)

Communist Party of India
April 20, 2023
Press Release
CPI Parliamentary Group leader and National Secretary Binoy Viswam submits Private Members’ Bill for the abolishing Governor’s office.
CPI leader and Rajya Sabha MP Shri Binoy Viswam submitted a private member bill for the abolishment of the Governor’s office which violates the balance of powers put in place by the Constitution between the Union and the states. The Governor, not being an elected representative of the people, ought (…)

Southasia Peace Action Network
25 April 2023: We at Sapan, Southasia Peace Action Network, strongly condemn the cowardly, criminal and murderous attack on an Indian Army vehicle in Poonch last Thursday that killed five soldiers on the last day of the holy month of Ramzan, ahead of the auspicious festival of Eid.
We extend our condolences to the families and loved ones of the Rashtriya Rifles Unit jawans deployed for counter-terrorism operations in the area, who were bringing fruits and (…)

BOOK REVIEW
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Basu Chatterji: And Middle-of-the-Road Cinema by Anirudha Bhattacharjee
Vintage/Penguin Random House Pages: 305; Price: Rs 699 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670096253 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670096251
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He put his own hard-earned money into the making of his first film, whose story be bought from noted Hindi writer Rajendra Yadav for Rs 21. It was the late 1960s. Sara Akash became a huge success and gave Basu Chatterji not just fame but a standing in the film world that stood by (…)

A Haunting Tragedy Gender, Caste and Class in the 1866 Famine of Orissa by Bidyut Mohanty ascertains understanding famine as a process to comprehend who starved during the famine and why. The book engages the reader in understanding the Orissa Famine in 1866 that had its worst impact on the poor, in particular the agricultural labourers, weavers, salt workers and fisher folks, invariably belonging to the lower castes who were marginalised and deprived. The growing consciousness of the (…)

Reviewed by Brian Elliott (Wright Patterson Medical Center and Wright State University) __0__
Stethoscope:
The Making of a Medical Icon.
by Anna Harris, Tom Rice
Reaktion Books 2022. 191 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-1-78914-633-2
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The stethoscope is perhaps the most recognizable icon in medicine. Its early nineteenth-century invention by René Theophile Hyacinthe Laënnec is well described by historians and articulated in Laënnec’s De l’auscultation médiate ou traité du diagnostic (…)

* Does ‘Justice’ Come from the Barrel of a Gun? | Arup Kumar Sen
* Atiq Murder and SP Malik Revelations | Arun Srivastava
* Ticket Distribution by Parties in Karnataka Elections | P S Jayaramu
* Does NHI Truly Measure Health Status | Chathukulam, Joseph & Buch
* student suicides

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, April 22, 2023
Playing the ‘Rules’
The Modi-led BJP Government is hard at work using the state machine to protect allies and friends and go after critics, fix public opinion via the news machines, censor out uncomfortable news, and influence the legal process to whitewash and clear names of those ideological buddies of the Hindutva spectrum who had been booked for crimes . . . ; to alter history books with the Mughal period of our History —all marked (…)