The Indian government has ordered hundreds of paramilitary troops into eastern parts of the country where Maoist rebels have increasingly been taking control. This year, 669 people have died in violent incidents involving the Maoists. October was a particularly humiliating month for the Indian police. First, members of the Communist Party of India [Maoist] captured an Inspector and beheaded him. Then, a police station was attacked and two policemen killed....
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Of receding glaciers and lack of benchmark data of Meena Menon
From Leh, the 40-km drive to Khardungla, the highest motorable pass in the world at 18,380 feet, winds gently through mountains coated with thick snow. To the left of the pass the Ladakhis swear is the Khardung glacier which has retreated, though there is no study to confirm it. In fact, Prof. Syed Iqbal Hasnain, a leading glaciologist and a senior fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) who...
More »Not free to starve
IROM CHANU SHARMILA, 37, a poet and aspirant suicide, was this week unable to attend a cultural festival held in her honour in Imphal, capital of India’s north-eastern state of Manipur. She was in hospital, being force-fed lentil soup through a tube inserted into her nose. The festival and an attendant fast, joined by hundreds of Ms Sharmila’s sympathisers in recent months, were to mark an anniversary. On November 2nd...
More »The Honest Leftist by Ramachandra Guha
In a recent lecture, delivered in Mumbai in memory of Nani Palkhivala, the home minister, P. Chidambaram, attacked “left-leaning intellectuals” and “human rights groups”, who, in his view, “plead the naxalite cause ignoring the violence unleashed by the naxalites on innocent men, women and children”. “Why are the human rights groups silent?” asked the home minister. The short answer is that they aren’t, and haven’t been, silent. There are very...
More »Will the mindset from the past change? by Amit Bhaduri & Romila Thapar
Those that have governed in tribal areas must share the responsibility for the negligence of the adivasis. The proposals for a multi-lateral dialogue should be set in that context. There has been a flurry of concern as also vituperation over the activities of the Maoists in the forests that are mostly home to tribal society. There is a confrontation between the state and this society through the intervention of the...
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