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Days of rage signal the onset of change
With thousands worldwide joining the Occupy Wall Street protests against corporate greed and irresponsibility, this is no longer a movement confined to leftists and ageing hippies. Is this the tipping point when the discourse will change, asks Mari Marcel Thekaekara More... Impact of the Vishaka JudgmentWhile a legislation on sexual harassment seems imminent, the Vishaka Judgment on sexual harassment at the workplace has, over the last 15 years, leapt out of the statute books and deeply influenced policy and practice in institutions and offices More... Grassroots scientists challenge seed monopoliesBeej Bachao Andolan is removing the veil of secrecy from the seed research and development process by training farmers in Uttarakhand on cross-breeding rice varieties, helping them reclaim this traditional knowledge and technology from the agri-chemical industries that monopolise the sector More... The poor fight to stay on BPL listThe BPL survey 2011 and its inclusion/exclusion criteria has serious repercussions for India’s poor. The very BPL card that helped a person build a house under the Indira Awas Yojana will now see him excluded for owning a pucca house; the phone booth granted to the disabled will now see them excluded for owning a fixed phone line; a basic outboard motor on a fishing boat will knock a poor fisherman off the BPL list More... The road from 11 to 21Just days before 9/11 the UN had resolved that every September 21 would be observed as International Day of Peace. The distance from 9/11 to the International Day of Peace is best traversed by the kind of people-to-people contact made possible by international education, says Swarna Rajagopalan More... Living on the peripherySix thousand migrants who have been living in Delhi’s Jai Hind Camp for the last 15 years are struggling to retain their dwellings, kiosks and livelihoods as waste-pickers as land sharks try to oust them to cash in on the spiralling value of land. This story of callous displacement is being played out all over urban India today More... Raising the dust on illegal mining in GoaOnly nine of the 90 active mining leases in Goa appear to be valid, preliminary investigations by the Justice MB Shah Commission reveal. The rest have been exploiting a legal loophole to extract upto 54 million metric tonnes of iron ore per year. Joseph Zuzarte reports on the dust that is, finally, being raised in the state about illegal mining More... The Sindhol power struggleThree more hydropower plants on the Mahanadi, which already has the Hirakud dam, will mean that the river will be dammed four times in a 100-km stretch, virtually killing it. To what lengths is the government prepared to go to serve the interests of water-guzzling industry, ask communities and activists who are strongly resisting the Sindhol project More... Women map their livesThe women of Itaha Kalpi, a drought-hit village in Bundelkhand, UP, came together across caste lines to map water and other resources available in their village in rangoli, and then on paper. In the process, the barefoot cartographers also learnt to map their inequities, their aspirations and demands, and began to voice these More... The burden of being MuslimAfter every terror strike India's Muslim youth are fearful -- of encounters, illegal detention and torture. How long must Muslims live under suspicion of being terrorists or supporting terrorism? The sense of insecurity has become part of our lives, says Mahtab Alam More... Anna Hazare is inspiring India’s somnolent people: Irom Sharmila2,500 km away from the Ramlila grounds where Anna Hazare’s fast has the government in jitters, Irom Sharmila in Manipur continues unheard into the 11th year of her fast protesting human rights abuses under the AFSPA. Thingnam Anjulika Samom asks this prisoner of conscience what makes her continue to uphold democratic ideals with her only weapon – her body More... Darfurnica: Art must offend, shock and disturbRajashri Dasgupta visits Nadia Plesner’s Darfurnica exhibition in Copenhagen and reports on the Danish artist’s victory over accessories giant Louis Vuitton, which sued her for using a Louis Vuitton lookalike bag in T-shirts and paintings of a naked African boy to highlight the situation in Darfur and to condemn media’s obsession with celebrity coverage More... Becoming IndianThe Indian is no longer defined by those living within the borders of India but also those who are between and beyond borders; India is no longer governed by its own laws but also by international conventions and principles, writes Swarna Rajagopalan in the first of her new column on India and the world, and the tensions between More... Requiem for sustainable, subsistence agricultureIn Ladakh, the dzo has been replaced by the tractor, organic manure by chemical fertilisers, and indigenous crops by vegetables for the tourist market. A whole culture of agriculture is dead More... Tendu leaf binding centres: No place for pregnant womenThe Orissa government earns crores from the tendu leaf trade. But the poor women employed in the binding centres work 12 hours a day for less than minimum wages. Pregnant women, who work these long hours without adequate drinking water or sanitation facilities and no healthcare, are the worst-affected More... |
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