The Narendra Modi Interview That Should Have Been Indian democracy has unique ways to yank larger-than-life political leaders to the ground. Indira Gandhi was handed a comprehensive defeat after she unleashed the Emergency on the Indian public. Later, again, her son Rajiv—trapped in the Bofors scandal—brought the Congress tally to a mere 197 in 1989…
Love-Letters Like No Other On January 3, 1831, 176 years ago Savitribai Phule, arguably India’s first woman teacher and forgotten liberator was born. With the first school for girls from different castes that she set up in Bhidewada (Pune), Krantijyoti Savitribai as she is reverentially known by the Indian Bahujan movement, blazed a revolutionary trial….
Cracking the Glass Ceiling With the Wall A 620-kilometre-long wall of almost five million women was created in Kerala, striking down the brahmanical, right-wing forces of patriarchy, reasserting the progressive values of the people of India, and is all set to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. The women in Kerala led by Brinda…
Can an Unequal Earth Beat Climate Change? We either keep fossil fuels in the ground, or all of us are going to fry. So essentially posits still another new blockbuster study on climate change, this one just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Our fossil-fuel industrial economy, the study details, has…
BEST’s Contracting-Out of Bus Services: A Case Study in Privatisation According to the currently dominant ideology, privatisation is identified with greater ‘efficiency’ (the meaning of which is kept vague). Privatisation may take different forms: the handing over of existing public sector assets to private investors; permitting private investors to enter sectors hitherto reserved for the…
The Yellow Vest Movement Nothing shows the crisis of neoliberal capitalism more clearly than the popular uprising in France that is occurring under the banner of the “Yellow Vest” movement. Thousands are congregating in Paris over week-ends to protest against the intolerable burdens being imposed upon them in the name of “austerity” and to demand…
Stop The Criminalisation of Triple Talaq We, the undersigned individuals, women’s rights activists and allies of the women’s movement, are opposed to the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2018 in its present form. We appeal to the Members of Rajya Sabha to completely withdraw the Bill and significantly re-draft it in the…
New GDP Series and Its Assumptions Controversy over the growth performance of the Indian economy took another turn with The Indian Express breaking the story about Niti Aayog not allowing the back series to be announced three years back because it showed a higher growth rate during the UPA regime. The suspicion that the new…
Naseeruddin Shah ko Gussa Kyon Aata hai? The index of health of democratic society is gauzed by the feeling of security experienced by the minorities. Similarly one can say that the degree of democracy in a society is reflected by the degree of ‘freedom of expression’ in the society. In India we see that both…
MLK Day Today: The Legacy of the Man and the Myth Long gone are the days when white American radicals turned their collective backs on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968), and embraced Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. In those heady days during the late 1960s, King sounded, at least to young protesters against…
दिल्लीत सुरु असलेल्या शेतकरी आंदोलनाच्या पार्श्वभूमीवर या लहान पुस्तिकेचे प्रकाशन लोकायत मार्फत करण्यात आले आहे. शेतकरी आंदोलन आणि त्यातल्या मागण्या या केवळ शेतकऱ्यांपुरत्याच नसून विविध अंगांनी सर्व सामान्य जनतेच्या हिताच्या आहेत, याबाबत मांडणी करणारी ही पुस्तिका!