-The Tribune The farmers’ protests reflect the western region’s pre-election zeitgeist Uttar pradesh’s regions spanning the west, east, centre and Bundelkhand, exist in silos, each with their own preoccupations and concerns conditioned by economics, geography and demography. However, come an election, political imperatives transcend the distinctive characteristics. UP votes as one state, and has lately, rooted for a single party or coalition. The fractured verdicts that threw UP into disarray in the...

-The Hindu Census data in India are losing their relevance in the development agenda India is busy debating the caste census when the regular Census itself has not been conducted owing to the pandemic. It is quite ironic that varioUS Elections have been held, and people gathered together at large rallies flouting COVID-19 norms, while the Census has still not been conducted. This is the first time that India has not conducted...

-Scroll.in The cast of characters readers will meet is staggering, and necessary, to understand the complex relationship between democracy and some the poorest people. Very few books on poverty in India are as nuanced as Indrajit Roy’s Politics of the poor: Negotiating Democracy in Contemporary India. From its very first page, Roy has his readers agog when he informs them that “the world is richer than it has been at any time...

-The Hindu A troubled Meghalaya will see unrest growing until 2023, when the next elections are due, says the editor of ‘The Shillong Times’, Patricia Mukhim On August 13, an ailing former leader of an armed group was shot dead in the middle of the night at his home in Shillong by a police team. The incident led to unrest in Mawlai where the encounter occurred and resonated in the adjoining neighbourhoods...

-The Hindu Its retrieval of the old secular political language openly counters the BJP’s divisive and communal politics On September 5, 2021, in Uttar Pradesh, lakhs of farmers gathered at Muzaffarnagar’s government inter-college ground for the kisan mahapanchayat organised by the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM). At the mahapanchayat, Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait reiterated the farmers’ demands to repeal the three farm laws and for the “legal guarantee of MSP...