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Maoist violence and the government’s response
The constitutional obligation to take special care of the protection and development of adivasis and dalits was diluted when the Union home ministry transferred this role to a new ministry of social justice, writes K S Subramanian, former director of the home ministry’s Research and Policy Division, which studied emerging Naxalite violence in the context of increasing atrocities against adivasis More... The real costs of oilThe recent Mumbai oil spill ought to serve as a wake-up call to the authorities on the reckless manner in which the country is building and maintaining its ports. In Mumbai, the outdated MbPT was to have made way for the modern JNPT on the mainland, but MbPT is hanging on to its 1800 acres of prime real estate, exposing the city to the threat of more oil spills and hazardous chemicals More... We are only halfway to understanding women’s ‘agency’Feminism’s deepest belief is that women’s voices must come to the fore, but when they do, we find these voices often scuttle our assumptions about what should be the right/legitimate form of ‘agency’. How do we account for the agency of women returning to violent partners, of women who decide not to throw off the veil but put it on, of women who want to be mail-order brides or sex workers? Manjima Bhattacharjya explores More... Religious revival in a changing worldNew insecurities and alienation that arise out of migration and urbanisation in a globalised world are driving more people to religion as a way of establishing their identities and validating their experiences More... A new measure of povertyOn the 20th anniversary of the Human Development Report, Oxford University and UNDP are bringing out a Multidimensional Poverty Index that will replace and refine the Human Poverty Index. The new measure, which uses 10 different indices, threw up a startling fact: just eight Indian states have more poor people than the 26 poorest African countries combined! More... Communal, sectarian, neo-conservative: Is this the new Kerala?Is Kerala’s famed cosmopolitan ethos breaking down? With increasing incidents such as the severing of the hand of a Kerala professor for a perceived sectarian offence, it would seem that the once solid Malayali identity is being fragmented on religious, denominational or caste grounds, says John Samuel More... Beyond the Khushboo caseThe Supreme Court judgment quashing all criminal cases of obscenity against Khushboo is a welcome blow against hypocritical morality masquerading as virtue. But it isn’t enough. We need to debate the merits of criminalising sexually explicit material as obscene, in sharp contrast to publications, films and material that promote sexism and violence, writes Rakesh Shukla More... Did Mumbai learn nothing from 2005?Although the realisation that Mumbai’s mangroves have to be preserved has sunk in after the disastrous floods of 2005, nothing concrete has been done about it. Now there are plans to build a new airport that, environmentalists say, will result in an estimated 170 hectares of mangroves being destroyed. And the diversion of two rivers More... The riddle of representation: Issues in the caste census debateFor close to a century veils have been drawn over the backwardness of the Dalits and OBCs. It is time to draw the veil aside, gather the numbers and give the long-neglected OBCs their rightful voice in the affairs of the nation, says Cynthia Stephen in this historical perspective on the question of including caste in census data More... The corrupt doctorFollowing the arrest of the president of the Medical Council of India for accepting a bribe to recognise a substandard medical college, Sandhya Srinivasan points out that when money can buy medical seats, college accreditation, and degrees, we’re talking about multiple investments that must earn their returns. Those returns are being earned at the expense of consumers and patients More... Who didn’t help Carbide?‘Who let Warren Anderson go?’ is the wrong question; the right question is ‘Who didn’t let Warren Anderson go?’ writes Jyoti Punwani as she chronicles the betrayals and sellouts after the Bhopal gas tragedy More... Buckling under pressure from MNCsThe sorry 26-year saga of the Bhopal gas leak case -- in which the Supreme Court reduced charges from culpable homicide not amounting to murder to death by negligence while the administration bent over backwards to accommodate Warren Anderson -- spotlights the inadequacy of the Indian system to fix liability in industrial disasters and bring the guilty to book More... No honour in murderYoungsters in certain parts of India today cannot choose their partners. If they still do and the choice violates arbitrary, extra-legal norms set down by caste panchayats, the consequence can be death. Isn't it time we built a popular movement against the medieval practice of honour killings, asks Ammu Joseph More... Pirates of traditional knowledgeIf a draft protocol on access and benefit-sharing of genetic resources is adopted in Japan in October, there will finally be an international law to prevent corporations from commandeering biological resources and traditional knowledge for their own profit, without sharing it with the community that holds the knowledge More... Building an inclusive, responsive and capable stateThe multiple crises of economy, environment and governance have brought the focus back on the state. And not a day too soon, says John Samuel More... |
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