Dear Jailer Saheb: A Letter From Ravish Kumar
No prison wall can be so high as to suppress the soaring free voice. Those who seek to shackle the freedom of expression want to turn the entire country into a giant jail.
Farmers’ Protest in India – Price of Failure Will be Immense
If you want to know the consequences of the three farm bills, look no further than Mexico, where similar policies have driven millions of farmers and small retailers into bankruptcy, and the country has lost its food sovereignty.
Budget 2021 Appears to Be a Return to Business as Usual
There is nothing new in the budget. The neoliberal agenda continues with lower taxation, lower borrowing and efforts at asset sales to finance limited expenditures.
The Union Budget Is Marked by an Overall Compression of Expenditures for Agriculture
The Budget shows no commitment to agricultural growth or farmers’ welfare. Against the background of the raging farmers’ agitation, this is only likely to widen the government’s trust deficit with farmers.
Budget 2021 Utterly Disregards the Education Catastrophe Inflicted by COVID-19
An education catastrophe existed even before the pandemic, but it is clearly exacerbated now. Yet like every year, this year too the Ministry of Education’s allocation is whittled down to a fraction of its ask. To ignore it so comprehensively defies all logic.
Whither Right to Food? Social Security Scheme Allocation for Woman, Child ‘Reduced’
At a time of growing hunger and malnutrition, the Union Budget 2021 has actually reduced allocations for crucial social security schemes such as the ICDS, midday meals, maternity entitlements, and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
Covid, Climate, and ‘Dual Metabolic Rupture’
A Dual Metabolic Rupture between humanity and the planet is taking place, as industrial pollution destroys our ecosystem, and agribusiness generates wave after wave of killer pathogen. Globalised, financialised monopoly-capitalism has become an existential threat to life on Earth.
Myanmar Coup: the Generals are Back – but then They Never Went Away
A discussion of the diverse factors behind the 1 February coup in Myanmar.
131st Birth Anniversary of Frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan–Who?
February 6 is the birth anniversary of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a prominent Indian freedom fighter, and a die-hard opponent of the two-nation theory and the idea of Pakistan. A firm believer in non-violence, he enjoyed the same stature in the NWFP as Gandhi had in India.
100 Years of Chauri Chaura: Lessons from Gandhi for Today’s India
Gandhi, Chauri Chaura, and the entire context of the Non-Cooperation Movement, present important lessons for Indians. If incidents of Indians-against-Indians violence continue, our Swaraj, as the Mahatma had warned, will “stink in our nostrils”.