10 Trade Unions Call for Nationwide Protest Against Labour Codes on August 2
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10 Trade Unions Call for Nationwide Protest Against Labour Codes on August 2

10 Trade Unions Call for Nationwide Protest Against Labour Codes on August 2 On July 24, 2019, ten central trade unions gave a call for holding nationwide protests on August 2 against the government’s move to introduce two labour codes in parliament, claiming that their objections to the draft laws were ignored totally. “Central trade…

India’s College Students, Teachers Must Now Learn the Art of Unlearning
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India’s College Students, Teachers Must Now Learn the Art of Unlearning

Avijit Pathak “Most learning happens casually, and even most intentional learning is not the result of programmed instruction,” said Ivan Illich. It is not easy to remain secure with power. The intoxication of power breeds insecurity. And hence, it is not surprising that each regime of power has its own discourse of education through which…

India Opens its Own Onshore Financial Centre
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India Opens its Own Onshore Financial Centre

Neeti Biyani and Sakshi Rai   Income and wealth inequality in India is deepening. The current regime, despite its promises to tackle black money, has chosen a contradictory course of action which has bolstered financial secrecy in the country, further widening already existing structural inequalities. The extent of income and wealth inequality in India is…

Gandhi, Tagore, Modernity
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Gandhi, Tagore, Modernity

Aseem Shrivastava A year in which the country celebrates the Mahatma’s 150th birth anniversary offers us a timely opportunity to consider his criticisms of modernity and juxtapose them with those of the other towering figure of his generation, Rabindranath Tagore, whose 78th death anniversary is on August 7. Much is made nowadays of the differences…

Rahul Gandhi Warns of Institutional Take Over of India
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Rahul Gandhi Warns of Institutional Take Over of India

Rahul Gandhi Warns of Institutional Take Over of India Countercurrents Collective Taking responsibility for the Congress party’s poor performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi, on, 3 July, 2019, resigned from the post of the Congress President. He posted a four-page letter on Twitter, officially announcing his resignation as the Congress President. In…

How RSS Betrayed the Anti-Emergency Struggle
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How RSS Betrayed the Anti-Emergency Struggle

National Emergency was imposed on the country by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on June 25-26, 1975, and it lasted for 19 months. This period is considered as ”dark times’ for Indian democratic polity. Indira Gandhi claimed that Jaiprakash Narayan’s call to the armed forces to disobey the ‘illegal’ orders of Congress rulers had created…

We Parched the Country to Quench the City, and Chennai Still Cries for Help
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We Parched the Country to Quench the City, and Chennai Still Cries for Help

Thirty-four year old G. Manimaran is resentful when anyone brings up the topic of Chennai’s water crisis. In his analyses, water is not the problem, the city of Chennai is. Manimaran’s village, Padalam in Kanchipuram district, is 75 km from Chennai and located on the banks of the Palar, a river once famed for its…

When Girish Karnad Joined the Fight to Preserve Bababudangiri
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When Girish Karnad Joined the Fight to Preserve Bababudangiri

When the saffron brigade had laid siege to the Bababudangiri Dargah in Karnataka, calling it the ‘Ayodhya of the South’, journalist Gauri Lankesh mobilised writers and intellectuals to rally against the Hindutva surge in the historical site. In this piece published on December 3, 2003 in Lankesh Patrike, Gauri had recalled how Girish Karnad had…