BEST’s Contracting-Out of Bus Services: A Case Study in Privatisation

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…

Young India Adhikar March, February 7, 2019

Join the Young India Adhikar March on 7th February from Lal Qila to Parliament Street, New Delhi! Representatives of Student and youth organisations from all over the country met in JNU, Delhi on December 27, and decided to form a platform, the ‘Young India National Coordination Committee’ to fight the anti-student and anti-youth policies of…

Act VIII: Yellow Vests Take Over Streets Across France

Yellow vest protesters, who are demanding social justice in France, came out on Saturday, January 5 for their 8th massive mobilisation. Dwindling numbers during the holidays generated fears that the movement had waned, but after dinners and family gatherings, the people of France have retaken the streets. At least 18 people have been arrested so…

Massive Rallies, Angry Protests Mark Two-Day Countrywide Strike

Issuing a clarion call against the Modi government, an estimated 20 crore people from organised sector, both public and private, including workers working in multinational companies, scheme workers and the unorganised sector successfully carried out a two-day nationwide strike on January 8-9. They were protesting against the “anti-labour, anti-people and anti-national policies” of the BJP-led…

Nayantara Sahgal’s Speech She Wasn’t Allowed to Deliver

Nayantara Sahgal (91) is a renowned Indian writer, and winner of the 1986 Sahitya Akademi Award. She returned her award in October 2015, to protest the “growing intolerance” in the country and silence from institutions like the Sahitya Akademi. She was to inaugurate the 92nd Marathi Sahitya Sammelan on January 11, 2019, but the organisers…

How to React to Stupidity at the Science Congress

Correlation is not causation—but it’s really hard to set aside the fact that India’s ruling party has empowered a clutch of people to vocalise their pseudoscientific beliefs without fear of ridicule, leave alone consequence. When you hear a person in any kind of leadership position utter unscientific, ahistorical nonsense, you used to be able to…

Amid Institutional Decline

Allegations of interference in major institutions have been the big news of late. The ongoing fracas in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has got out of hand, with the two top officials in the chain of command accusing each other of corruption. The recent pronouncements in the Supreme Court do not promise an early…

Some Implications of Verdict on Aadhaar Act

Some Implications of Verdict on Aadhaar Act Introduction While the verdict of the 5-Judge Constitution Bench of Supreme Court on Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY)’s Unique Identification (UID)/Aadhaar number database project being implemented by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), Aadhaar Act 2016 and indiscriminate metadata collection of Indian residents is 1448…