2024

Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR)
Mere words cannot be criminalized in a democracy
Jun 17, 2024
https://www.pudr.org/press-statements/mere-words-cannot-be-criminalized-in-a-democracy/
On June 14, 2024 Delhi’s Lieutenant-Governor (LG) sanctioned prosecution against Arundhati Roy and Sheikh Showkat Hussain under Section 13 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) for their speeches at an event titled ‘Azadi – The Only Way’ organised in Delhi on October 21, 2010 (…)

PEOPLE’S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES 332, Patpar Ganj, Opp. Anand Lok Apartments, (Gate No. 2), Mayur Vihar-I, Delhi 110 091
Founder: Jayaprakash Narayan; Founding President: V M Tarkunde
President: Ms. Kavita Srivastava (Rajasthan); General Secretary: V Suresh (Tamil Nadu); E.mail: puclnat[at]gmail.com, pucl.natgensec[at]gmail.com Please visit our website: www.pucl.org (…)

Press Release
Safai Karmachari Andolan
20th June 2024
Safai Karmacharis should be protected from extreme heat
The unrelenting heatwave conditions in many parts of the country have gone on record as being the most severe ever in the country. Temperatures have reached close to 50°C in many parts of North and Nort West India, including the National Capital Region. This has been the longest spell of heatwave in India because it has been experienced for about 35 days in different parts of (…)

[fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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Shooting the Sun: Why Manipur Was Engulfed by Violence and the Government Remained Silent
by Nandita Haksar
Speaking tiger (5 January 2024) Paperback ‏ : ‎ 200 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9354477011 | ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9354477010
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Manipur is burning with hate and violence since May 2023. We the outsiders do not know what triggered this vicious cycle of violence. Nandita Haksar’s recently published book, Shooting the Sun: Why (…)

June 21, 2024
Brotherless Night is an unforgettable coming-of-age novel, an awakening from tribal loyalties into new-found identity and agency. It is set in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, during the civil war between Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese ethnic majority and the country’s Tamil minority. Between 1983 and 2009, this bitter conflict resulted in the deaths of around 100,000 people and displaced approximately 800,000 more.
The protagonist, Sashikala Kulenthiren, a young Tamil woman, is a teenager when (…)

* India’s new government faces job creation challenge | Biswajit Dhar
* The Built-in Inequality in India’s Social System | Ajay Kumar Mishra
* Democratic Indiaah! | L K Sharma
* Against Leninism | Tom Wetzel

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream June 15, 2024
Yes Mr Modi’s BJP fell short of the majority mark in the 2024 General election and had to have the help of coalition partners to form a Government. That is all done and the coalition partners are playing ball no sign of any ‘moderation’ or restraint in the air. Those who are reading the decline in the number of seats won by BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as a full scale rejection of its communal politics are in some delusional bubble — (…)

June 8, 2024
The recently concluded 18th Lok Sabha elections was a historic one in many senses. It was fought over seven phases, spread over nearly two months, draining the resources of the Parties, energies of the leaders as they campaigned hard in the severely hot summer and the citizens being made to put up with the non-stop coverage of the election coverage by the electronic and the print media, leading to a kind of election fatigue. Here is an attempt to decode the results. Before (…)

Elections are not only lifelines of working democracies but set the agenda for deepening democracy and narratives for inclusive development. But it is not always the same. Elections can also be used to set the narratives in negative ways sacrificing the constitutional values at the altar of political power. India has so many such examples in its electoral history from bringing communal politics to the centre stage of electoral narrative to using emotive issues to divert people’s attention (…)