-Scroll.in Young people from marginalised communities are building networks to challenge the upper-caste capture of academic and professional spaces. One day sometime in mid 2020, Aditi Priya, a Masters’ graduate in Economics employed with a research organisation, messaged Disha Wadekar, a lawyer, on Facebook. Priya needed help with research she was conducting on the link between police presence and gender-based violence on women, particularly in marginalised communities. She felt Wadekar, as a...

-The Tribune The farmers’ protests reflect the western region’s pre-election zeitgeist Uttar pradesh’s regions spanning the west, east, centre and Bundelkhand, exist in silos, each with their own preoccupations and concerns conditioned by Economics, geography and demography. However, come an election, political imperatives transcend the distinctive characteristics. UP votes as one state, and has lately, rooted for a single party or coalition. The fractured verdicts that threw UP into disarray in the...

-TheWire.in Her writings are indispensable for anyone interested in learning about the history of agrarian change and labour in modern India. Professor Sheila Bhalla, professor emerita at the School of Social Sciences, JNU, a respected teacher, a labour economist of repute and a committed activist, passed away in Puducherry on September 5. Canadian by birth, she was introduced to trade union activities early in her life by her father. She studied at the...

-Civil Society News, Gurugram THROUGHOUT the first and second waves of the coronavirus pandemic, the extent of the tragedy in India was mostly unknown. How many people had really died? Were they men or women? Information was anecdotal and speculative. This April, there were queues at crematoriums and burial grounds, but even as bodies piled up there were no reliable figures to go by. We now have some figures based on data-hunting...

-Foundation of Agrarian Studies An influential section of Sri Lankan agricultural economists and scientists has deplored the recent course change in the country’s agricultural policy made by the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government. The decision by the government to ban the use and import of chemical fertilisers and pesticides in pursuit of a “100 per cent organic food producer” status for Sri Lanka has already had disastrous consequences for the economy of the...