I came across this piece of news in Struggle News:
To mark the first anniversary of the arrest of Dr Sen, on 14 May 2008 and to call for his immediate release the Free Binayak Sen Film Festival is being organised by concerned citizens and groups around the country. The package of 10 documentaries, presented in [...]
Archive for the 'Human Rights' Category
Free Binayak Sen Film Festival
Published by May 11th, 2008 in Activism, Cinema, Health and Human Rights. 0 CommentsBurma?
Published by May 10th, 2008 in Democracy, Geopolitics, Human Rights, Media and Women. 0 CommentsBurma, says anonandon, is disappearing:
A friend of mine has a favourite joke about Indian media. He says, the country of Japan could cease to exist but our newspapers would be far more concerned about the pretty young Bollywood starlet who stares out of the page with mascara heavy eyes, pouting next to a headline that [...]
Sacrificing the brain dead
Published by May 8th, 2008 in Health, Human Rights and Policy. 0 CommentsMagesh probes the issue of organ transplantation: aren’t the ‘brain’ dead going to suffer if they’re clubbed together with the ‘dead’ dead?
A chennai doctor has opined that sensitizing the public on cadaver transplantation for organs like kidney would greatly address the large imbalance in the demand and supply(Ah..well, thats the kind of language they speak) [...]
Insurance for sex workers
Published by May 3rd, 2008 in Business, Human Rights, Society and Women. 0 CommentsLIC introduces an insurance scheme for sex workers- ‘let’s revel in the news’, says Premasri :
To reiterate, this represents a tremendous victory for sex workers, as it symbolizes an eventual shift towards a rights-based framework, which recognizes sex workers as workers with the fundamental right to basic services such as savings accounts and life [...]
A National Museum of History and Culture of Dalits
Published by April 30th, 2008 in Art, Culture, Dalit, History and Human Rights. 0 CommentsAniruddha Kulkarni says India needs to build a museum of Dalit history and culture:
But I do think some psychological displacement is at work when a magnificent Holocaust Memorial Museum, in which the criminals are not Americans, precedes a Washington institution of equivalent stature dedicated to the saga of national violence that is slavery and segregation…[...] [...]
Dignity, among other things
Published by April 21st, 2008 in Caste, Human Rights, Personal, Poverty and Prejudice. 0 CommentsJina asks whether reservation ensures dignity, and instances from her life leaves her with shades of grey. Nice read.
This, in one of the most evolved campuses known for its social conscience and moral fibre.I have heard sob stories from fellow management classmates [who happened to be belonging to a caste which offered him reservation] on [...]
Mandal lives!
Published by April 11th, 2008 in Caste, Human Rights, India, Justice, Policy, Politics, Prejudice, Society and public space. 6 Comments I started out with the intention of linking to both sides: blogs that oppose reservations and those which support them. Less than two pages of Google Blog Search results yielded these reactions:
Jasdeep feels reservations won’t undo the damage done by a poor public education system:
Revolutionary changes needs to be done in Education system, But [...]
What, after all, is the evidence in favor of public schools?
Published by April 9th, 2008 in Business, Education, Government and Human Rights. 0 CommentsYet, the evidence is very much there. After all, China far outperforms India on educational indicators such as enrolment and efficiency, despite having a largely public primary system. Clearly, you don’t need a private system to achieve high quality and provide universal access to education.
Closer to home, Abi at Nanopolitan shows how publicly funded Kendriya [...]
Where are the good public schools?
Published by April 9th, 2008 in Business, Caste, Education, Government, Human Rights, India, Infrastructure and Regulation. 0 CommentsIn response to Gurucharan Das’ oft-repeated, sweeping characterization of public schools in the country as ‘a mess’, Abi points to the Kendriya Vidyalayas as one example of government-run schools that do better than private schools:
One of the things that infuriate me about Gurcharan Das and his ilk is the fact that they dismiss oh-so-casually all [...]
Kashmir Singh
Published by April 6th, 2008 in Government, Human Rights, India and Justice. 0 CommentsThe Catapult questions the failure of the Indian government in taking care of patriots:
Shortly after his release from a Pakistani jail after nearly three decades of solitary confinement Kashmir Singh has admitted that he was a spy who was captured on the line of duty. And what did the Indian government do for him all [...]
The fallacy of school choice
Published by April 3rd, 2008 in Democracy, Education, Human Rights, Policy, Politics, Poverty and Theory. 0 CommentsDweep Chanana joins the debate on privatization of education and vouchers:
The argument for privatization is at once political and ideological. It is political because it reflects how societies feel about the role of the state in providing “public” services such as healthcare and education. It is ideological because proponents often supplement demands for privatization [...]
Common School System
Published by March 31st, 2008 in Education, History, Human Rights, India, Policy, Politics and Poverty. 0 CommentsAnil Sadagopal advocates a Common School System:
The role of Common School System in forging a sense of common citizenship and nationhood is yet to be appreciated. This becomes a critical nation-building function in a geo-culturally diverse country like India. How can the present multi-layered school system fulfill this requirement? Today, the school system is like [...]
A walk down the Red Corridor
Published by March 30th, 2008 in Activism, Capitalism, Democracy, Development, Economy, Human Rights, India, Policy, Politics, Poverty and South Asia. 0 CommentsFire on the Mountain has been posting a series of in-depth interviews with revolutionaries from South Asia. The interviews, it appears, were conducted by the Norwegian Revolutionary Socialist party (Red!) for their party magazine. The first of the interviews, with G.N.Saibaba, Deputy Secretary of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), an All Indian Federation of [...]
Poverty is a political issue
Published by March 27th, 2008 in Adivasi, Caste, Dalit, Development, Economy, Human Rights, Policy, Politics, Poverty and Religion. 0 CommentsAnalysing a paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly, John Samuel suggests poverty isn’t just about incomes, it is also about identities :
The notion of impoverisation (or the process of the active creation of poverty with in society or economy) needs to be seen in the context of social, economic and political inequality. Such [...]
The Shaming of Scarlett Keeling
Published by March 26th, 2008 in Feminism, Government, Human Rights, Justice, Media, Patriarchy, Women, public space and sexuality. 17 CommentsIf the killing was brutal, the reactions that followed haven’t been kind either- Sharanya condemns those who are condemning the victim:
In other words, the condemning of the murdered girl, her family, her friends, their lifestyles and their choices is a typical misogynist response – the wicked woman gets her dues. And this time, there are [...]
Sukhpreet Kaur, the heroine
Published by March 25th, 2008 in Human Rights, India, Politics, Recommended Links, South Asia and Women. 0 CommentsAt a time when the debate on Sarabjit Singh is heating up, his wife declared that her daughters and she don’t want the Indian government to set free some terrorist to get her beloved back. JK at Varnam contrasts this with the genuflection of the Indian government in the recent handling of the Tibet issue.
[...]
‘Saala ek machhar aadmi ko hijra bana deta hai’
Published by March 23rd, 2008 in Art, Books, Democracy, Feminism, Government, Human Rights, Literature, Patriarchy, Personal, Politics, Religion, Secularism, South Asia and public space. 2 CommentsThat line from a Nana Patekar film, says, Aman Kumar, captures his ‘rage and frustration’ over the Taslima Nasreen episode:
So has mine! Sadly, I no longer consider India a secular country after watching and analyzing the political developments in last 15-20 years. Right from Shah Bano case to Babri demolition, and from Gujrat massacre to [...]
Bhumika
Published by March 22nd, 2008 in Activism, Caste, Feminism, Human Rights, Language, Media, Patriarchy, Prejudice, Society and Women. 0 CommentsIn 1993 in Hyderabad a group of women from different feminist organisations decided to venture into the challenging terrain of publishing a feminist magazine in Telugu and the first issue of Bhumika came out in the month of Jan1993.
Bhumika Women Collective emerged in the context of the women’s movement as a felt need to make [...]
Shariah in the West
Published by March 21st, 2008 in Human Rights, Justice, Patriarchy, Policy, Religion, Secularism and Women. 0 CommentsAsghar Ali Engineer foresees conflict between conservative ‘ulama and progressive Muslims if Shariah laws are applied in the West:
I have met many ‘ulama in UK. They are as conservative as in Islamic countries, perhaps even more in the alien environment of UK and other Western countries. If any attempt is made to apply Islamic [...]
Talking around Tibet
Published by March 20th, 2008 in Culture, Democracy, Geopolitics, Human Rights, India, Justice, Media, Politics and Religion. 0 CommentsKaran ponders on what India should do:
The Tibet issue is bound to remain in the headlines given the scrutiny the world has thrown on every aspect of Chinese existence. From levels of pollution, to dealing with dictators in Africa, to poisoned toys being exported, the lack of free speech and media and their crackdown on [...]
Naxalism and conventional politics
Published by March 18th, 2008 in Adivasi, Dalit, Democracy, Development, Government, Human Rights, Justice, Policy, Politics and Poverty. 0 CommentsGautam Sen says he doesn’t support Naxalism but he doesn’t seem to believe in the efficacy of ‘conventional politics’ either:
Despite these differences, my answer to my brother’s imprisonment is not the advocacy of violence. It is a waning and tenuous hope that perhaps the system does work, as Pai thinks it does. Perhaps my brother [...]
Gender and other identities
Published by March 17th, 2008 in Caste, Culture, Feminism, Human Rights, Women and sexuality. 0 CommentsAt Ultra Violet, Usha BN eplains why ‘gender does not function in isolation’:
In the 70s and 80s, the women’s movement in India focused on mobilising women across caste, class and ethnic background against violence and discrimination. Women were seen as a single political category. So there was a universalising approach which held that all women [...]
‘Gandhi’s spell’
Published by March 17th, 2008 in Activism, Adivasi, Caste, Dalit, History, Human Rights, Poetry and Women. 0 CommentsPremasri points to a growing campaign for land redistribution spearheaded by Dalit women in Andhra Pradesh:
Recognizing the the need to make their voices heard, dalit women in Andhra Pradesh are rising up and demanding their rights by filing applications for ownership of unused land. To date, over 25,000 applications have been filed by women in [...]
Sights and sounds of a landfill
Published by March 3rd, 2008 in Human Rights and Photoblog. 3 CommentsDr Vivek M records audio and some powerful images of scavengers working in a landfill in Bangalore.
Watch the slideshow with the audio running in the background.
Rural Poor- Human Rights, Inhuman State?
Published by February 22nd, 2008 in Adivasi, Business, Caste, Community, Culture, Dalit, Democracy, Development, Environment, Human Rights, India, Justice, Policy, Poverty and Spotlight Series. 7 Comments[ This is Essay # 18 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]
Rural Poor- Human Rights, Inhuman State?
Theory and Practice in a Liberal Democracy
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Rahul Banerjee
Over the past two years or so the normally un-newsworthy rural poor in India have time and again made the headlines with their vehement opposition to the forced acquisition [...]
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