By Our Representative  The civil rights group Right to Food Campaign (RtFC) has taken strong exception to the order given by the district collector of Patan, Gujarat, to transfer all the ration cards from the Dalit Fair Price Shop (FPS) dealer to another village based on the social boycott that has been continuing against a Dalit dealer by the Thakor Community (upper caste) in Kanosan village.

By Shamsul Islam*  Respected VC of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit, I hope a recent report in one of the leading English dailies of India did not misreport you when it stated that Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Vice-Chancellor (VC), Santishree Pandit while speaking at a book launch function on September 17, 2023 at Pune where RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was present on the dais, said: “I am proud to be a Hindu and belong to the Sangh [RSS].”

By Our Representative  A press meet organised by the civil rights group Campaign Against State Repression (CASR) on "Crimanlizing Dissent: Voice of Political Prisoners and Need For United Struggle" saw nearly half-a-dozen human rights defenders claiming to have faced “state repression” and how they were treated on being put behind the bars for asserting their democratic right.

By Fr Cedric Prakash SJ*  On 1 October, the world is once again observing the ‘International Day of Older Persons’. It is the 33rd commemoration of this United Nations Day. Such days are often relegated to tokenism and cosmetic exercises filled with a plethora of speeches and feel- good activities. The theme ‘Fulfilling the Promises of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for Older Persons: Across Generations,’ however, is a challenging one -- which gives little room for the normal complacency or for a mere celebration of ‘yet another UN Day!’

By Umar Manzoor Shah*  Even after toiling hard for an entire year, Shivaji Rao, a 37-year-old farmer, would find it hard to cover the basic expenses of his family. He cultivates maize from his one-and-a-half-acre land in Telangana.

Counterview Desk  The advocacy group Coalition for a GM-Free India has urged the Supreme Court of India to pass orders to implement the unanimous recommendations of the five independent experts of the Court’s Technical Expert Committee, including the Government  of India’s experts. 

By Bharat Dogra*  A lie repeated a hundred times will not turn a lie into a truth. The big media should realize this and stop perpetuating the lie of the green revolution saving India from hunger, long after the world has awakened to the reality of how harmful the green revolution has been from the point of nutrition, food safety, environment and climate change.

By Gajanan Khergamker*  The roots of “Bharat”, “Bharata”, or “Bharatvarsha” are traced back to Puranic literature, and to the epic Mahabharata. The Puranas describe Bharata as the land between the “sea in the south and the abode of snow in the north”.

By Saurav Sarkar  The ethnoreligious violence in the Indian state of Manipur between Meiteis and Kukis has been ongoing since May, but it was only in July 2023 when a video went viral in India showing two women being paraded naked that the world began to pay attention to the situation in earnest. One of the women was reportedly sexually assaulted after the conclusion of the video. Calls for accountability came from all quarters, including the Indian Supreme Court, and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was forced to break his conspicuous silence on the conflict in the northeastern state.