Come up with Ordinance before electoral code to stop eviction of forest dwellers: Letter to Modi

By A Representative
PS Krishnan, IAS (retd), former secretary to Government of India, Ministry of Welfare, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, referring to BJP chief Amit Shah and his Congress counterpart Rahul Gandhi asking their respective party chief ministers to file review petitions against the Supreme Court’s order of February 13, 2019, has said, it is good that an all-party consensus on STs' forest rights, but this is not enough.
The apex court order had allegedly endangered the rights of over a million forest dwellers over forest land. According to Krishnan, such review petitions "virtually never lead to positive results", insisting, "What is required is decisive action, which will at one stroke resolve the problem, and this has to be through the legislative route and, initially, at this pre-election stage though the Ordinance route."
Asking him to "consider issue of such an Ordinance, before the Election Code of Conduct comes into force", Krishnan says, "The Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (ABVKA), which has been working since decades among STs, has also, in its resolution adopted in its Kendriya Karyakari Mandal meeting at Satna on February 24, 2019 demanded that the Central Government should intervene in this matter through an Ordinance."
Recalling the decision of tribal organizations to call a Bharat Bandh on March 5, 2019, Krishnan said, "It would be called off only if the Centre brings an Ordinance before March 5, 2019. It is in the interest of the Government and in the interest of building up confidence in the system of democratic governance that the Ordinance is issued without the Bandh being necessary and before the Bandh takes place." He adds, "Consequence of such Bandhs will not be pleasant."

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.

Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.

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.

Counterview

Search This Blog