Paribartan, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee's rallying cry for change during last year's landmark assembly polls, seems to represent the disillusionment among her supporters more than the way the state is being governed. Several of her newfound supporters, including former Left icons who helped her acquire a certain legitimacy against the ideology-driven Communist parties, have turned critical of her government. The tide seems be turning faster since the arrest of...
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NHRC yet to pass final orders on complaints against STF-Krishna Prasad
36 killed in suspicious encounters during anti-Veerappan operations: panel It is nine years since a fact-finding commission constituted by the National Human Rights Commission and headed by a retired High Court judge found that at least 36 people were killed in suspicious encounters by the Special Task Force (STF) during the anti-Veerappan operations. Yet, the NHRC has not passed final orders on the complaints of atrocities against the STF. The commission, in...
More »Starving in India: A Scribe Tries to Save a Life-Ashwin Parulkar
Amit Kumar, an Indian journalist based in the eastern state of Bihar, received a tip in 2009 from a village called Manan Bigha just two kilometers away from his home. There was a man there dying from starvation, he was told. The situation was urgent. Mr. Kumar rushed off to visit the man, Kangresh Manjhi, and exhaustively documented his story. He learned how Mr. Manjhi, a lower-caste, landless laborer, was forced...
More »Starving in India: Legislating Food Security-Ashwin Parulkar
Over the past week, I’ve chronicled my investigative research on starvation in India – a project I’ve been working on with a colleague from the Centre for Equity Studies, a New Delhi think tank. We’ve told stories of people who were forced to eat poisoned roots to stay alive; a family that suffered the deaths of members from three different generations in a span of 24 hours; a woman faced with...
More »Inside Slave City-Debarshi Dasgupta, Dola Mitra, Pushpa Iyengar, Madhavi Tata, Chandrani Banerjee & Amba Batra Bakshi
What is it that makes the Indian middle class treat their domestic help with such derision and abuse? In her nine years as a nurse working with rescued domestic workers in Delhi, Mariamma K. thought she had seen the worst. That was until 2010, when she and her colleagues went to rescue a 17-year-old girl from a home in west Delhi. Sangeeta was found with bite marks all over her body....
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