2024

[fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
Reviewed by Shu Wan (University at Buffalo)
__0__
Making Disability Modern: Design Histories Bess Williamson, Elizabeth Guffey, eds.
Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020 Illustrations. 264 pp. (paper) ISBN 978-1-350-07042-4
__0__
Wan on Williamson et. al, Making Disability Modern
As a promising academic field, disability studies is currently undergoing a material turn. The proliferation of scholarly writings about the past and present of (…)

* Death of F.S. Nariman Marks The Loss of Voice of Conscience | Vijay Kumar
* Bail not jail is a privilege only for a select few | Faraz Ahmad
* NDA, India, and The Coalition Conundrum
* We need to talk about obstetric violence | Vijayetta Sharma
* Dwelling | Ivan Illich

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, February 24, 2024
Over the years there has been a consistent effort by the Government of India led by Narendra Modi to scuttle anti-Government protests and criticism on the street but also in Media and the social media. In the past years — 2021, 2023, and now in 2024 the Government has repeatedly used a strategy to block specific social media accounts belonging to certain journalists, politicians, and activists. and also to shut down mobile internet (…)

[fond noir][blanc]TRIBUTEblanc]fond noir]
The passing away of Fali S. Nariman is an irreparable loss to legal fraternity, nay liberal voices all over the world. He has been a voice of conscience for Indian Judiciary. He was liberal lion and lived by the principle, and never compromised with it.
This tribute will refrain from analysing his unmatched legal acumen, his standing as a tallest constitutional lawyer and numerous distinctions, as it would amount to gilding the lily.
F.S. (…)

The world’s most dangerous terrorists, the Taliban, are now in the third year of their illegitimate rule over Afghanistan, and their connectivity with the outside world is rising constantly. “The world has abandoned us,” says a prominent Afghan rights activist after escaping to the West.
Since August 2021 when the Taliban, originally raised and nurtured by the United States and Pakistan and sheltered in the latter country, have travelled a long way to have become the rulers of a (…)

The Supreme Court on February 12 granted indefinite extension to the interim bail granted much earlier to Ashish Mishra the son of Union minister Ajay Kumar Mishra in the 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence which claimed eight lives.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and K V Viswanathan confirmed interim bail last in September, 2023 to Ashish Mishra charged with the murder of a group of farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri on October 3, 2021
This group was walking down the road to register its protest at a (…)

(Suna Bohu a political story written by Fakirmohan Senapati. The Karan coming from outside rose to power in colonial times. Their education shaped their community. Karan turned into a political community and captured politics of Odisha till today.)
Introduction:
Fakirmohan Senapati’s story Sunabohu needs to be placed in the context of sociology of its time. The story’s centres around the Karan caste. The ethnographic background of Karan is found by Malley’s District Gazetteers of (…)

Binoy Viswam Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha)
Date: 20th February, 2024
To,
Shri Eknath Shinde, Chief Minister, Government of Maharashtra
Respected Shri Eknath Shinde Ji,
I write this letter to register my profound disappointment with the manner in which the Maharashtra Government is probing one of the most heinous acts of political terrorism in the country. On February 20, 10 years back, Comrade Govind Pansare was shot at by cowardly armed assailants. Comrade Pansare was a (…)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has strongly pitched the coming the nineteenth general election in April-May 2024 in terms of a performing leadership (himself) and government and the Congress that has never done anything right since independence. He always criticizes, almost condemns, Nehru in the same breath to highlight his own image. Before that, he pocketed Bihar and Nitish Kumar to kill the perception of an opposition. Even as Rahul Gandhi enters Chhatisgarh on his Bharat Jodo Nyaya (…)

Demand for a law guaranteeing MSPs for crops in markets has once again surfaced with renewed farmers agitation. Of late, several articles in news media and TV debates about the dangers of providing a legal sanctity to the Minimum Support Price (MSP). Dr. Ashok Gulati (TOI, 14th February, 2024), Dr. Ramesh Chand (Niti Ayog, 2023) are major proponents of this argument. They argue that purchase of all crops (23 of them) at guaranteed MSP would drive the government to bankruptcy and leave (…)