2023

by Garima Mani Tripathi *
Pankaj Lal (name changed) was teaching at a Delhi University college as an ad hoc faculty for the last 12 years. Originally from Western Uttar Pradesh, he has been an outstanding academician and boasts a rich list of publications. And yet, he was one of those many unlucky ad hoc faculty members who could not succeed when interviews were held in his college for permanent teaching positions. Indeed, the failure of these ad hoc teachers is symptomatic of the (…)

by Gyan Prakash *
Abstract
The discourses around merit often delink an individual from his/her social and cultural history. One-dimensional imagination of merit checks the emergence of alternative thinking. There is an immediate need to ensure the equality of conditions in order to meet the tyranny of meritocracy. Broadening the idea of affirmative action could be a way forward.
A judge from Patna high court while hearing a case related to a suspended district land acquisition officer (…)

by Ram Puniyani
Textbooks of schools are also a site of contestation between differing versions of nationalism. The two inheritors of colonial India, India and Pakistan show this in a parallel and opposite ways. In Pakistan since the country came up in the name of Islam, it taught a history in schools which began with Mohammad bin Kasim ruling in Sind in eight century. The Hindu kings and Hindus are shown in a poor light to the extent that an average child in Pakistan school will refer to (…)

India’s rural employment guarantee scheme has been a big help for the poorest rural households in recent years. This scheme has been created under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to which the name of India’s most respected leader Mahatma Gandhi is often added, making it MG-NREGA. It has attracted international appreciation as a means of providing the kind of livelihood opportunities to weaker section people that can strengthen rural life by promoting such important work (…)

by Anthony P D’Costa *
The 2019 satirical film Eeb Allay Ooo! highlights the grim reality of India’s employment crisis. The protagonist, who lacks marketable skills, takes on the impossible job of chasing away monkeys from public spaces. The subcontractor, not happy with his employee’s performance, hurls insults, withholds his wages and finally fires him. The film unwittingly captures what is wrong with India’s labour markets. Labourers pull the cart carrying bags of garlic on their way to (…)

by Jayanta Kumar Ghosal *
19th century Bengal witnessed many events leading to the rise of nationalist sentiment. In 1878 the country saw the massive protest against Vernacular Press Act. Radical Bengali nationalists began organising peasantry and workers of various industries. Bramho reformers took important role in this respect. Two persons Ramkumar Vidyaratna and Dwarakanath Ganguly are the names worth mentioning who vividly described and exposed the oppression of tea garden labours (…)

by Aurobindo Ghose
The Gautam Adani group has been catching headlines since about the last week of January 2023.
Two recent exposures of the Gautam Adani conglomerate, have inflicted sufficient market punishment on it. One by the Hindenburgh short seller’s accusation of “brazen stock market manipulation and accounting fraud”, triggered an huge sell-off of its shares, wiping out about $118 billion of its market valuation. While the Bangalore – based Ken report’s exposure of non-repayment (…)

A brilliant move of the Booker Prize-wallas to rename the Booker Prize with Iris Murdoch’s name. Many of us who had the privilege and the joy to be her students at Oxford believe that this renaming would bring a huge new audience and fans for this great thinker, as well as very different criteria for choosing the winner.
For those of us who were her tutorial students at St. Anne’s College in Oxford, in the late 50s and early 60s, being taught by Iris was exceptional. She was the moral (…)

THE 1968 students’ uprising in Europe changed the matrix of campus politics in much of the world, India being no exception. Lahore-born Suneet Chopra was a student at SOAS in London around the time and was inevitably influenced by the compelling logic of revolutionary change. In December 1970, the Students Federation of India (SFI) was created in Kerala from the clay of a divided communist movement. Two years later, Suneet was scouting for talent to expand the reach of the students’ (…)

via Facebook
Friends Against Dictatorship - FAD
Public statement by 46 Thai civil society organizations regarding the deportation of asylum seekers from the People’s Defence Force to the Myanmar dictator regime
The Myanmar dictator regime has ascended to power through staging a military coup to topple a democratically elected government. It was the decimation of the supreme power of the people of Myanmar. The only legitimate ruling government in Myanmar should be the National Unity (…)