-The Hindu ‘Jai Bhim’ is inspiring various marginalised communities and not just Dalits to bring about transformative change. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar is often seen only as a Dalit icon. And ‘Jai Bhim’, a slogan coined by Babu Hardas, a firebrand Ambedkarite working class leader from Nagpur, is usually considered as a sectarian greeting. However, this salutation, which displays the reverence that the deprived sections have for Ambedkar’s contribution to their emancipation, is...

--Press release by Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights dated 20th October, 2021 GENEVA (20 October 2021) – Water is increasingly being treated as a mere commodity and even as a financial asset, a UN human rights expert told the UN General Assembly today, undermining the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation and the sustainability of the environment. Pedro Arrojo Agudo, the Special Rapporteur on the...

-Newsclick.in 2,55,602 appeals and complaints were pending in the 26 information commissions till June 30, according to a report. October 12 marked 16 years of the RTI Act, 2005. The law has empowered millions of citizens to seek information and hold the government accountable. Section3 of the Act states: “Subject to the provisions of this Act, all citizens shall have the right to information.” Under the Act, information commissions (ICs) are the final...

The newly released Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round) establishes the fact that the farm households are more and more relying on wage incomes instead of 'net incomes from crop cultivation' for their livelihoods. In Marxian lexicon, proletarisation (a term that we can loosely use for depeasantisation) refers to the process in which the farmers/ tillers are...

-Press release by Oakland Institute dated 21st September, 2021 Oakland, CA: The Food Systems Summit, hosted by the United Nations, has been reduced to a day-long virtual event on September 23, 2021 — a result of an unprecedented counter mobilization around the world. Hijacked by proponents of corporate industrial agriculture, the summit faced a united front from farmers, civil society groups, and social movements around the world, who rejected and mobilized...