2024

On 2 Sep 2023, the Government of India constituted a High-Level Committee (HLC) ‘to examine the issue of simultaneous elections and make recommendations for holding simultaneous elections in the country’ . The HLC comprised of the Former President of India as the Chairperson, Cabinet Minister for Home Affairs as a member, and six other Members . In addition, the Minister of State (Independent Charge), Ministry of Law and Justice, was indicated as a special invitee in the meetings of the (…)

17 January 2024
Simultaneous elections can’t possibly work without committing extreme violence to the Constitution.
The committee tasked with examining the proposal for ‘One Nation, One Election’ — in lockstep with the theme of one nation, one everything, one leader — issued notices on January 5 seeking public suggestions by January 15.
The notice was published in major newspapers, but seemed to have flown under the radar, being picked up nationwide over the next few days. However, (…)

Tradition has an immense strength of exhibiting humanism but modernity is failing specially colonial modernity. The best example one finds with the dalit communities who exhibit their brotherhood among themselves to their old people. Hindu hierarchy has not been able to destroy the humanism. In an interview with a Dom musician with five children working as daily labour one finds the truth. Because of his big family his younger brother left him and led a separate life but as he had no child (…)

Many informal sector workers are more exposed to pollution because they work outdoors or else work indoors in polluting conditions. Hence the health risks they face when air pollution levels are high are much higher compared to the risks faced generally by other citizens.
To avoid high health risks sometimes the authorities place many restrictions on construction and industrial activities for certain periods of high pollution levels, or else sometimes place a complete ban on construction (…)

Abstract
This short essay brings out some of the key elements that made Karpoori Thakur one of the tallest socialist leaders in Bihar. It discusses some of the important contemporary implications of the politics that Thakur espoused and practised. It makes a plea for greater engagement with Karpoori Thakur’s life and times in his birth centenary year for a better understanding of varying regional trajectories of the politics of social justice.
Introduction
Even as a given conjuncture (…)

The Government of Odisha, led by the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) under Chief Minister Mr. Naveen Patnaik, provides massive funding to revive all religious institutions and their practices in the state. These religious initiatives are part of his political strategy to counter the BJP in the upcoming state and general elections. "In competitive religious politics, Naveen Patnaik leaves no stone unturned to defeat the BJP and its Hindutva politics in Odisha," said a well-meaning comrade, who has been (…)

This is the story of three kinds of weaves that articulate three distinct yet overlapping traditions of spirituality. They come from three diverse spatial backgrounds: the Pashmina shawl from Kashmir and its adjoining areas, the Vrindavani Vastra from Assam and the Par from Rajasthan. Elements of faith and tradition in them is dealt with as well as the deracination of the arts with the passage of time.
FAITH COMES IN different forms and manifestations. It sometimes comes in the form of (…)

Abstract: The lady or gentleman is the person who only carries out work with the help of ‘destruction’. Human works can be summed up in two actions: destruction and construction. The more the work is nothing other than destruction, the more it is truly human and noble. The peasant only produces destructive work who has never desires to destroy something. Like ‘destruction’,the process of ‘forgetting’ is essential action of any kind as Nietzsche argued.
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Introduction: As Roland (…)

October 24, 2023
Taken together, recent postings on this blog have pointed to the conclusion that the long-term global survival of human civilisation requires that global economic growth must be eliminated if not reversed, and the growing problem of international mass migration must be dealt with by means of collective, international state intervention favouring the most disadvantaged communities which are the main source of migrant flows.
However, it is evident that under the (…)

January 25, 2024
If 2022 ranked as Sri Lanka’s worst-ever economic year, 2023 was relatively stable. The government, headed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, negotiated with creditors and secured an Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The EFF program as part of a four-year US$3 billion loan. The Asian Development Bank loaned US$200 million in December 2023 and the World Bank released an additional US$250 million.
Following six quarters of (…)