From the beginning of the proceedings today, speakers from Team Anna appeared to be pressing home one point above all: they had returned to Jantar Mantar with an agenda larger than the (Jan) Lokpal. The Bill must be passed this winter session, or else there would be a “jail bharo aandolan”, said Anna. “Not a single jail will remain empty,” he promised. But the larger goal was another law, or...
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Kishenji encounter fake, says BJP
-The Hindu The encounter in which Maoist leader Kishenji was killed on November 24 was “staged,” Rahul Sinha president of the State unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party said here on Wednesday. “It is as clear as daylight that the encounter in which he was killed was staged,” Mr. Sinha said while addressing a party rally. Pointing out that had it been a genuine encounter there would not have been so many bullets...
More »Globalisation, caste tension & social inequalities by Bhupendra Yadav
Gail Omvedt, an America-born Indian, is a social anthropologist trained in the radical academic setting of the University of California during the angry 1960s and the tumultuous 1970s. Her doctoral thesis on the “Non-Brahman movement in western India, 1873-1920” set the stage for her engagement with the subcontinent. Today, first-rate professionals are making a beeline for the West, but in Omvedt we have an instance of the ‘reverse flow' happening some...
More »Strange Justifications
-EPW The Anna Hazare group’s foray into electoral politics exposes its shaky foundations. The script of this drama was already written. A single issue campaign, focused narrowly on corruption in public life without a wider world view on the root causes of corruption or on the myriad other problems afflicting Indian society, had to come apart at the seams at some point. That moment arrived when “Team Anna”, as the people behind...
More »India accounts for 22% of global rotavirus-inducted diarrhoea deaths by Kounteya Sinha
India recorded 98,621 rotavirus-inducted diarrhoea deaths in 2008, which is about 22% of global toll from the infection. Nigeria - the second worst-hit country - recorded about 41,000 deaths, or less than 50% of fatalities as compared to India. Pakistan (39,000) and Bangladesh (9,000) figures among the top 10 worst-affected nations grappling with rotavirus infection, says a study that appeared in medical journal, "The Lancet Infectious Diseases". It shows 453,000 deaths occurred...
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