2024

Sandeshkhali, a remote island in the Sunderbans, has become the centre of political turmoil in West Bengal in the month of February, 2024. Very recently, two national English dailies, The Telegraph, and The Hindu, have carried field reports on what happened in Sandeshkhali. The report carried in The Telegraph noted in this connection: “Sandeshkhali became the epicentre of a political controversy in the state after an attack on Enforcement Directorate officials during a raid at the home of (…)

28th February,2024
Results of the elections held to Rajya Sabhaij in Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh are out. The outcomes demonstrate the tightening of the BJP’s hold over the North India, the near decimation of Congress in Himachal Pradesh if the government falls as a result of it’s members cross voting and moving over to the BJP and the failure of the Samajwadi Party to hold it’s flock together resulting in the chief whip of the Party himself voting to the BJP.
Let me (…)

India has been ruled by Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party for the last one decade. BJP in turn is progeny of RSS, which has a goal of Hindu Rashtra. It has many progeny, hundreds of associated organizations with lakhs of volunteers (Swayamsevaks) and thousands of senior workers called Pracharaks (Propagators). It has been pursuing its agenda of Hindu Nation with double the speed since BJP came to power at the center. Rise of BJP on electoral battlefield is due to intensifying of (…)

’Gender Justice’ is a wide term that takes in its sweep every facet of life. For centuries, in fact ever since known history, we have been living in a patriarchal (with some notable exceptions) and feudal society which assigns to women a subordinate position in the social hierarchy. To begin with, on a very simplistic note, we can look at the two words – “gender” and “justice” separately first.
Unpacking Gender
“Gender” in the most layman understanding is way of referring to the social (…)

[published on March 8, 2024]
Bicycling and Feminism
One hundred years ago, Alice Hawkins, a suffragette, cycled around Leicester (UK) promoting the women’s rights movement, causing outrage by being one of the first ladies to wear pantaloons in the city. During the fight to win the vote the bicycle became not only a tool but also a symbol for the emancipation of women.
The American civil rights leader, Susan B Anthony, wrote in 1896:
"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I (…)

“When do you say it is a genocide? When do you intervene? Do you wait until a certain number of people have been killed? Is there a threshold? (Adila Hassim, counsel for South Africa versus Israel in the ICJ)
Indians for Palestine, a group of concerned citizens, convened a public meeting in New Delhi on 23 February 2024 to discuss the recent ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Gaza and to extend solidarity to the people of Palestine. Participants included representatives (…)

One is saddened by the departure of Fali S. Nariman, a noted nonagenarian jurist without donating to the Bhopal disaster victims the legal fees which Union Carbide Corporation/Dow Chemicals Company, a US multinational company paid him, to erase the taint of Bhopal disaster. Prof. Upendra Baxi’s advice in this regard is recorded in Nariman’s autobiography-Before Memory Fades. Notably, Nariman also represented asbestos companies. Carcinogenic Asbestos is banned in 70 nations. Its safe and (…)

Automation could reproduce informal and precarious work rather than transform existing trends.
February 27, 2024
A dystopia of job loss and surveillance or a utopia of transformation and progress: This conundrum sums up the intense debate around automation and its impact on the future of work. Optimistic narratives about progress from the Fourth Industrial Revolution are juxtaposed by predictions of a bleak future, where robots and automated processes lead to mass casualization, (…)

The peoples of the region must push their governments into urgently coming together around climate change and promoting the core value of empathy, agreed participants of Southasia-focused panels at the World Social Forum

KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 23 2024 (IPS) - This week the 2024 annual meeting of the World Social Forum (WSF) was held in Nepal. There were fifty thousand participants from over 90 countries, exchanging strategies to address the multiple global crises, from climate catastrophes to unfettered capitalism, inequality, social injustice, wars and conflict.
The WSF was created in 2001 as a counterbalance to the elitism of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The WEF, founded and chaired by a private (…)