Counterview

By A Representative  In a gruesome incident, a poor farmer is alleged to have been tortured by two constables of the Border Security Force (BSF) and one G branch officer attached with Bithari Border outpost, Naga Company, 112 Battalion, West Bengal. The victim and his family reside in Daharkanda village under Swarupnagar block and police station in the North 24 Parganas district. Kirity Roy, secretary, Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (MASUM), and national convener, Programme Against Custodial Torture & Impunity (PACTI), in a complaint to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chairman, said, "When Isarul Dafadar went into the field to fetch his cow, the BSF personnel stopped him and they beat him repeatedly with bamboo sticks, gravely injuring him on head, back and leg. Blood clotted in the injured part of his body." Roy added, "There is about one kilometre distance between the International Border Pillar and the place of the incident. That means BSF person...

By Harsh Thakor*  On 28th July we commemorate the 50th death anniversary of Charu Mazumdar,who was tortured to death in jail in police custody.. It ranks amongst the worst abuse of human rights of a political prisoner or leader in India or the world. Today history is repeating itself in with Custodial deaths being a routine occurrence in prisons.Charu’s assassination illustrated the neo-fascist nature of the Congress regime in West Bengal. The Civil Rights groups undertook extensive research on the fascist nature of the execution of not only Mazumdar but thousands of cadres of C.P.I. (M.L).In 1997 a judicial inquiry was initiated 25 years after the murder by son Abhijit and other comrades, but the petition was dismissed by the high court and Supreme Court. Charu Mazumdar must be credited for igniting the spark of ‘Naxalbari ‘by giving it a political shape, through, his Eight documents. He planted the seeds of the Indian Communist Movement demarcation from revisionism and Naxalbari ...

By Dr Mansee Bal Bhargava*  Congratulations to the new President of India , Smt. Droupadi Murmu and best wishes to the outgoing President of India Shri. Ramnath Kovind. As Smt. Draupadi Murmu makes it to the first citizen alias top position of the country, the President of India, the media houses flash the news as the first tribal and second women President is elected. Even the leaders and others also assert this identity of first tribal and second women President on Smt. Murmu. On the one hand it feels like, yes, it is high time that we have someone representing the indigenous community of the country and definitely yes, it is high time that the next 11 Presidents are women to settle the scores of covering half the land, water and sky of the country. On the other hand, one gets to think about the stinkingly deep-rooted caste/class/origin and importantly gender discrimination as well as distortion that are among the gifts (rather diseases) of the patriarchy and elitism in the cou...

By NS Venkataraman*  Addressing a conclave virtually in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged the farmers to adopt natural farming (organic farming) to protect the soil from the harmful impact of chemicals. Further, the Prime Minister said that crop produced from a chemical free process will fetch higher prices in the international market due to the growing demand for organic products. The Prime minister pointed out that 90,000 clusters have been created all over India under the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) and the target is to cover 10 lakh hectares under the scheme for organic farming. The above statement of the Prime Minister clearly indicates his target and hope to promote organic farming in a massive way in India . All the information that he gave are factually correct. However, a careful study of the ground conditions and considering the need to sustain and promote the production of food grains in a massive way and the agricultural productivity issue...

By IMPRI Team  Under the series, The State of Gender Equality– #Gender Gaps , Gender Impact Studies Center (GISC) , IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi organized #WebPolicyTalk on the topic The State of Discrimination: Sub-National Comparison of Legal Barriers to Women’s Right to Choose Work in India with Bhuvana Anand. Ms Bhuvana Anand is the Co-Founder and Director at Trayas . The session was chaired by Prof Vibhuti Patel, a Visiting Professor at IMPRI & Former Professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai . The Discussants of the event were Dr Anisha Sharma, Asst. Professor of Economics, Ashoka University and Dr Yamini Atmavilas, Technical Director (Head, Strategy & Research) at Circle.In and Former India Lead for Gender Equality, India Country Office, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation . Prof Vibhuti Patel discussed the relevancy and urgency of the discussion of gender issues as most of the discussions only focused on macro realiti...

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  High inflation, growing unemployment and depreciating rupee are three fundamental issues faced by Indian economy today. The educational and health infrastructure is falling apart. Human development is in the bottom of the nadir. The Modi government has no plans to take responsibility to navigate Indian economy away from these crises. It is passing on its responsibility on Indian people by reckless hiking of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on food and other essential items. This nationwide rent seeking activities in terms of high taxation on goods and services that are part of the rent-seeking process. It will have devastating impact on poor and malnourished population, small businesses and rural poor. Such a policy will help corporates and it is going to push poor people into a regime of inescapable hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity. Hindutva is transforming India into a rent seeking market society, where welfare and social loss is immanent. The G...

Power and climate policy analyst Shankar Sharma writes to the chairman and members of the NITI Aayog: *** May I draw your kind attention to an objective analysis of the recently commissioned NITI Aayog Report, as in the web links here , which calls it the hypocrisy of Modi government’s 'climate concerns'. Few other articles/ reports in these links indicate very serious issues confronting our people not only in the immediate sense but also in the long term; they are so especially in the sectors of environment and energy. But sadly, the concerned authorities seem to be completely oblivious to these developments (or is it that they are completely ignoring them), and to the associated credible concerns of the people of this country. Hence, they are being blamed for continuing with a Business as Usual (BaU) scenario of relentless industrial and commercial growth, without rationally considering the enormous negative growth because of the social, ecological and health impacts of s...

By Bharat Dogra  An avoidable controversy has arisen recently due to the unfortunate comments of a politician of Punjab who called Shahid Bhagat Singh a terrorist. That this politician is linked closely to the Khalistani ideology explains his narrow worldview, and his comments regarding Bhagat Singh were quickly dismissed by most people. However to counter false propaganda based on such comments, it will be helpful to record some more details. Bhagat Singh and his close colleagues made it amply clear time and again that they did not believe in indiscriminate violence and greatly valued human life. Bhagat Singh wrote very clearly, ‘non-violence as a policy indispensable for all mass movements’ while force is justifiable only ‘when resorted to as a matter of terrible necessity.’ During their trial Bhagat Singh and B.K.Dutt said in a joint statement,‘ We hold human life sacred beyond words.’ When asked to define ‘revolution’, they said equally clearly that it did not mean the cult of ...

Counterview Desk  Revealing more instances on how security forces in West Bengal are seeking to turn Bangladeshi women and children as victims of human trafficking into accused under the Foreigners Act, Kirity Roy, secretary, Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (MASUM), and national convenor, Programme Against Custodial Torture & Impunity (PACTI), has said that the authorities do not seem to be interested in initiating proper investigation. In a second letter to the chairman (click here for the earlier one), National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), within a span of few days on the subject, the Hooghly-based activist said, "Cross border trafficking is very organized crime where touts or middlemen are operating this crime in connivance with border guards of both sides, India and Bangladesh", hence women and children crossing the border should be treated with a human approach. Text : I am writing this complaint regarding detention of Bangladeshi women in West Bengal and ac...

By Jay Ihsan  It was astounding that a so-called pandemic succeeded in bringing the world and humanity to its knees. Life literally came to a standstill with the world baffled at how best to tackle the coronavirus disease 2019 or Covid- 19. Governments the world over did the unbelievable and unexpected --forcing the people into taking the mRNA untested Covid- 19 vaccines, protecting instead the vaccine makers and not the end users. For those refusing to buy into the Covid-19 narrative, be it wearing the face mask in public spaces or be vaccinated, the government threatened to make life difficult for them. The drill back in Malaysia, a country of 32.37 million people, was no different. Lockdowns, face masks and vaccination were topmost priority. While the Malaysian government held back from making Covid-19 vaccination mandatory, breathing easy was nowhere on the horizon. Face masks became a regular feature in public spaces and places of prayer. So was the deal with vaccination ...