2023

PEOPLE’S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES, RAJASTHAN
Jaipur, 29th March, 2023
Press Note PUCL demands action against the police team which fabricated cases against innocents and conducted slipshod investigation in the 2008 Jaipur bomb blasts, which killed 74 people Fresh investigation should be ordered to ensure justice to the kin of the 74 killed and 150 injured Compensation must be given to the five acquitted for the loss of 15 years of their lives, which they spent in jail as their families (…)

New Delhi, March 31, 2023: The Status of Policing in India Report 2023 was launched today at the India Habitat Centre by a panel of eminent personalities, followed by a discussion on rethinking surveillance. The theme of this year’s report is surveillance and privacy, and in his keynote address, Justice (Retd.) J. Chelameswar, a former Supreme Court Judge, said that only a robust privacy law can determine if the data of private citizens is being collected for the public good.

Slow Disaster: Political Ecology of Hazards and Everyday Life in the Brahmaputra Valley, Assam
by Mitul Baruah
Routledge
2022 | 170 pages
ISBN 9780367509774
__0__ Slow Disaster draws on fieldwork in Majuli, believed to be the largest river island in the world, located in the middle of the Brahmaputra River. Unfolding in a slow, incremental manner, floods and erosion reduced Majuli’s landmass from 1,255 sq km to about 421 sq km over the 20th century; rendered over 10,000 families (…)

BOOK REVIEW
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Escape from Kabul: The Inside Story by Levison Wood and Geraint Jones Hodder & Stoughton 2023 Pages: 340; Price: Rs 899 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1399718126 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1399718127
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The Americans led a brutal war in Afghanistan for two long and bloody decades, vowing to usher in democracy despite the terrible failures in Vietnam and Iraq. And like earlier, the Americans one day decided that enough was enough. But the military pullout, which was long in the (…)

* India: Lurches Closer to “Opposition-Mukt Democracy”!? | Sukla Sen
* Saffron Clad Babas in Orissa | Radhakanta Barik
* Regenerating The Forest Ecosystem: Few Concerns | Suranjita Ray
* Budgets 2023-24 of Punjab and Haryana | Sher Singh Sangwan
* After Macron’s pension reform, all eyes on France’s trade unions | Michel Wieviorka

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, March 25, 2023
Modi Government’s daily dose of ‘kitch’ self-advertising has gotten louder and bigger over the past eight years. The North Korean leader may soon be tempted to send his publicists to Delhi for a south-south cooperation agreement. Billboards with a photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Govt advertising sit atop practically every gas station, bus stop, trains station, airport, metro network, outside public toilets, and on paid frontpage (…)

by Sukla Sen
While all eyes were riveted on the unfolding tumultuous scenes in the ongoing Budget session of the Indian Parliament over the unrelenting opposition demands for a discussion on and a JPC probe into the Hindenburg report concerning Adani group of companies accusing the group of brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud — also specifically covering the alleged Modi-Adani nexus — and the persistent demands of the BJP MPs blocking proceedings in both the houses demanding (…)

by Sher Singh Sangwan *
The state of Punjab has projected total budget expenditure (BE) for 2023-24 at Rs 196452 crores compared to Rs183950 crores of Haryana. The increase in Punjab budget is 7 per cent while that of Haryana is 11.61 per cent over their RE of 2022-23. The highlighted 26 per cent growth in Punjab is over its previous year BE which has a little meaning. Out of this, interest expenditure will be Rs22000 crores in Punjab and Rs21250 crores in Haryana. In view size of (…)

by P. S. Jayaramu
(23rd March 2023)
The upcoming Legislative Assembly elections in Karnataka has kicked up lot of debate in the media and academia within the State if not at the national level. Newspapers and local television channels are devoting far too much space to cover the ensuing elections from the perspective of the Political Parties, the personalities involved, the role of caste and religion, including the ‘sermons’ being issued by Heads of important religious mutts. The focus (…)

The residual Pakistan after its dismemberment and creation of Bangla Desh in 1971, held its first elections to the National Assembly sometime around March, 1977. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on the lines of the Congress party in India, as the first elected Prime Minister, led the PPP under the 1973 Constitution, to a sweeping victory across the remaining four provinces of Pakistan, including numerically strong Punjab.
The right-wing Opposition refused to (…)