Tale of a Gujarat bridge, constructed in early 2013, but became unusable in a year after monsoon set in

By A Representative

This bridge near Umreth, part of a state highway leading to Vadodara, the hub of Central Gujarat, was constructed one-and-a-half years ago. Soon after monsoon set in, for nearly three months, it became virtually unusable, with long iron rods rising up vertically all over from the concrete surface. Recent heavy rains made things worse for the surface of the road. Despite complaints by Hamidpura village sarpanch Rohit Solanki, the officialdom gave mere assurances to repair it. Local people closed the bridge after vehicles began getting stuck (in a photograph, one of the motorbike rider shows how this happened). Other vehicles simply failed to steer their way through. Finally, the matter went to the district collector, Kheda, who ordered its repair. Currently, the repair work is on.

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From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

By Tersina Maria Toppo* A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.

UCC push would lead to state surveillance, erosion of women’s rights: Feminist alliance

By A Representative The All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA) has issued a sweeping condemnation of the push to implement Uniform Civil Codes (UCCs) across 21 BJP- and NDA-ruled states, warning that the legislation masquerades as gender justice while fundamentally expanding state surveillance, criminalizing consensual relationships, and undermining the constitutional and economic rights of women and marginalized communities.

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

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