Counterview

By Soumyadip Chattopadhyay*  Consideration of small and medium towns as well as the uniqueness of each city is imperative while planning urban cities. Noting this, the Center for Habitat, Urban and Regional Studies (CHURS), Impact and Policy Research Institute ( IMPRI ), New Delhi presented a discussion with Prof Manoj Parmar and Dr Binti Singh on “India’s Smart Cities Mission: Light Houses?” as part of The State of the Cities – #CityConversations.

By Sudhansu R Das Construction of National Highways for the movement of goods and services, agro processing industries, storage, godowns, super markets, commercial farming and advanced agriculture technologies etc are unable to check the rising food price in the country. The food price in the country has skyrocketed adding to hunger, malnutrition and stunted growth; it gives pain to people during the pandemic when people have lost income sources. One drumstick costs Rs 12 in Mumbai, Rs 15 in Pune and Rs 14 in Hyderabad when drumstick trees grow abundantly in the Indian climate. The tomato is sold at Rs 80 per kg in Hyderabad in winter season, brinjal at Rs 75 per kg in Mumbai. Besides vegetables, the cost of food grains and edible oil has become very costly due to various reasons. Fuel price rise, high transportation cost, increase in the cost of cultivation, growing demand from agro processors, growth of hotel chains, sourcing of food crops by super markets, shrinking of fertile ag...

By Mansee Bal Bhargava*  As a governance scholar-teacher-learner, it is an undying belief that the individual is the core unit and thus influences any governance decision and action. Besides, a belief that grounded-local solutions are key to any large (regional-national-global) problems like climate change. This belief can be extended to the philosophy of self-organization, which is also fundamental to governance research and practice.

By Gladson Dungdung*  Since the death of the 84-year-old renowned human rights activist Fr Stan Swamy (trained as a Jesuit priest), in judicial custody on July 5, 2021, which was actually an institutional murder orchestrated by the Indian state, a billion-dollar question has arisen in the minds of millions in India and abroad. Was Fr Stan Swamy a martyr or a traitor?

By Shamsul Islam*  An aggressive campaign to rehabilitate VD Savarkar (1883-1966) as great Indian freedom fighters is under way. He is considered as a legendary Indian nationalist, freedom fighter who spent 50 years in the Cellular Jail [CJ]. Multiple mercy petitions of his are hailed as his effort to secure freedom in order to work for uprooting the British rule. Last but not the least, he is glorified as a rationalist who fought against untouchability.

Counterview Desk  Kirity Roy, Secretary, Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (MASUM), and National Convenor, Programme Against Custodial Torture & Impunity (PACTI), Hooghly, West Bengal, in a letter to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chairman, has alleged “extra-judicial execution” of a poor young Dalit, Prakash Barmar, who was “shot dead on his head from point blank” by the Border Security Force (BSF) personnel on the Bangladesh border.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Kushinagar is celebrating the life and achievements of Bhadant Gyaneshwar Mahasthivir, the Monk in Chief of Mahaparinirvan main temple. He completed his 85th birthday on November 10. Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh is one of the foremost prominent places for the Buddhists all over the world as Buddha delivered his last sermon here and met his ‘Mahaparinirvana’. Recently, Kushinagar was linked with international aviation circuit as a new airport has just been inaugurated here a couple of weeks back.

By Harsh Thakor*  The book ‘Of Concepts and Methods' by K Murali (Ajith) seeks to challenge the conventional approach of Indian Communist parties and elaborates how they dumped the issue of caste into the graveyard. Divided into seven chapters, the writer does not reveal a classical Marxist-Leninist touch but traverses into unexplored regions, taking an inventive approach.

By Shalaka Chauhan, Adrian D’Cruz* With the Covid-19 crisis, the urban informal workers, largely invisibilized by modern urban development, were visible at least on mainstream news, and social media. Those heart wrenching images and news, and the subsequent mobilisation of civil society organisations, campaigns and government officials scrambling to fill gaps in safety nets for workers led to the mainstreaming of the informal workers’ social protection discourse.

 Cost perceptions By A Representative The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad's (IIM-A's) latest Business Inflation Expectations Survey (BIES), which seeks to provide ways to examine the amount of slack in the economy by polling a panel of business leaders, has said that the cost perceptions data indicates "hardening of cost pressures".