The Wire / By Manoranjan Mohanty
Mounting state repression acknowledges the growing solidarity among the oppressed. The August assault has opened up political possibilities for the opposition in the run up to 2019.
Read more
Scroll.in / By Ajaz Ashraf
The BJP government wants to teach a lesson to Dalit activists and their supporters, says the co-founder of the Dalit Panther party.
Read more
The Leaflet / By Kritika A
The arrests of human rights activists and lawyers on August 28 and earlier on June 6, 2018 are all part of a wider theatre of Hindutva’s state-sponsored repression on those demanding democratic rights and freedoms for the most marginalised of Indian citizens. What began with Bhima-Koregaon had actually begun long back, with the atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis crossing the political threshold, such as those in Una and Saharanpur, as well as the ‘institutional murder’ of Rohith Vemula in January 2016.
Read more
The CARAVAN / By Tushar Dhara
The circumstances surrounding all the purported assassination plots against Narendra Modi are intriguing—for the backgrounds of the individuals allegedly plotting the murder, for the political climate in which they were revealed, and for the media organisations that break the news.
Read more
The Wire / By Nandini Sundar
The aim is to silence those who have raised their voice against the abuse of state power and to warn others against opening their mouths.
Read more
The Wire / By Javed Iqbal
Activists opposed to displacement and mining in Gadchiroli speak about the new wave of state repression, adivasi culture, their own struggles with higher education, government policies and people’s movements.
(Conversation with Sainu Gotta, Lalsu Nogoti, Mahesh Raut)
Read more
First published: Oct 26, 2013
Towards a New Dawn / By Rona Wilson
Land, development and displacement has once again become the central point of debate in India. Curiously the debate is on industrial development ostensibly, under capitalism. Suddenly it has dawned upon the learned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his policy experts that land and agriculture cannot be the main basis for the economy of a country like India that is marching ahead in the 21st century.
Read more
KAFILA / By Vidhya A
In a statement issued on April 16 2018, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) claimed that the ‘National Policy and Action Plan’ to combat Left Wing Extremism (LWE) is ‘a multi-pronged strategy involving security and development related measures’[1]. This new policy, apparently in place since the NDA government came to power at the centre, claims to have ‘zero tolerance towards violence coupled with a big push to developmental activities so that benefits of development reached the poor and vulnerable in the affected areas’.
Read more
First published: June 17, 2017
Countercurrents / By Neema Pathak Broome and Mahesh Raut
The world environment day came and went one more time on the 5th of June, many passionate statements were made about the environment and need for tree plantation drives. Many tree plantation drives were carried out across the country. Even as these celebrations and plantations were being carried out, thousands of local communities across the country were risking their lives to resist destruction of trees that already exist in some of the country’s finest forests.
Read more
First published: May 3, 2009
Boloji / By Shoma Sen
Deep in the forests of Gadchiroli, a tribal area of eastern Maharashtra, live the Gond ‘adivasis’ (tribals), some of the poorest and most neglected people of the state. The region is considered dangerous because large parts of it have come under the sway of Maoist rebels, also known as Naxalites, who have taken up the challenge of organizing the Gonds to fight for a society they claim is based on justice and equality. The ensuing conflict between the rebels and the state has turned the region into a “police state”, where anti-insurgency security forces are constantly on the vigil, storming Maoist hide-outs and eliminating suspects. The word ‘encounter’ – a euphemism for such extra-judicial killings – has become a part of local vocabulary.
Read more