A large group of BJP leaders expresses support to agitating villagers Even as the Orissa government was set to resume land acquisition for the controversial Posco steel project in Jagatsinghpur district on Monday, political support for the anti-Posco agitation further grew on Sunday with a large group of Bharatiya Janata Party leaders visiting Gobindpur and other villages in Jagatsinghpur to express their support for the agitating villagers. The agitators, opposing the project...
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Singur whiff in Posco politics by Subrat Das and Subhashish Mohanty
The Posco project has turned into a political hot potato with the two main Opposition parties trying to extract as much out of it as possible, hoping the Rs 51000 crore project turns into another Singur. At a time when Naveen Patnaik government finds itself embroiled in a number of unsavoury controversies, including horse trading during the Rajya Sabha elections, the Congress and the BJP are looking to deliver the coup...
More »The discreet charm of civil society by P Sainath
There is nothing wrong in having advisory groups. But there is a problem when groups not constituted legally cross the line of demands, advice and rights-based, democratic agitation. The 1990s saw marketing whiz kids at the largest English daily in the world steal a term then in vogue among sexually discriminated minorities: PLUs — or People Like Us. Media content would henceforth be for People Like Us. This served advertisers' needs...
More »The Tyranny of AFSPA and Why it a Scar on Democracy by Babloo Loitongbam
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’...
More »Battle over the Anti-Violence Bill by John Dayal
Victims have not forgotten the following brutal tragedies in the life of independent India, even if the State and political parties may pretend to have. 1984—Delhi: On October 31, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards in revenge for ‘Operation Bluestar’. For the next three days, as Doordarshan telecast the lying in state of her body, over 3000 Sikhs—men and boys—were burnt alive while policemen, politicians and...
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