Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...

In the first such prospective investigation of sex ratio, doctors at Delhi's St. Stephen Hospital -- known for its maternal and child care services -- have noted that evidence from the data of birth from the Second Children in their hospital indicates that the sex ratio is being manipulated by human interventions. “More mothers with previous girls tend to use traditional medicines for sex selection in their subsequent pregnancies. Those taking...

Around 10 platoons of armed police came to Gobindpur in the morning and went back to their camps, citing “inclement weather”. But long before the cops came, Biswambar Mohanty, a Std 9 student of Kapteswar Vidyapitha of Gobindpur village, was up there with a torn umbrella at the sandy fields that separated Gobindpur and Nuagaon. Just a few feet away, a barefoot Soni Parmanik, 5, clad in a grimy yellow frock,...

Capitalism is supposed to bring in modernity, which includes a secular polity where ''babas'' and ''swamys'', qua ''babas'' and ''swamys'', have no role. Many have even defended neo-liberal reforms on the grounds that they hasten capitalist development and hence our march to modernity. The Left has always rejected this position. It has argued that in countries embarking late on capitalist development, the bourgeoisie allies itself with the feudal and semi-feudal...

This paper was presented at the Regional Workshop on War on Terror and Asian Democracy 17 May 2011, Kim Dae-Jung Convention Centre, South Korea organised by Solidarity for Democratization Movement in Asia (SDMA) Introduction In the discourse on terrorism and counter terrorism, September 11 stands as a watershed because of the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001. Government of India (GoI) also took full advantage of the ‘War on Terror’...