-The Indian Express One year since the Covid-19 lockdown was imposed, there’s been little change in the hunger levels and unemployment rate among migrant workers, especially women. Today marks the first anniversary of the day the central government announced an ill-planned national lockdown. India is home to nearly 500 million informal sector workers with practically non-existent social security and the unilateral decision pushed them into perilous circumstances, triggering their great exodus from...
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Dismantling the labyrinth: What I learnt about power and privilege when I quit Ashoka in 2016 -Rajendran Narayanan
-Scroll.in To truly create sanctuaries of learning and questioning, the right to be heard impartially must be universal. Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s resignation from Ashoka University has been met with widespread condemnation from various academics. Rightly so. He is one of the foremost scholars and an articulate commentator on the Indian Constitution and politics. His resignation triggered the resignation of the renowned economist, Arvind Subramanain, who was India’s Chief Economic Advisor between 2014...
More »Why We Already Know the Rishi Ganga Flood Was a ‘Sooner or Later’ Event -CP Rajendran
-TheWire.in There should be no doubt that the Chamoli disaster is a sign of our misguided developmental priorities and proves our inability to sustainably develop ecologically sensitive zones. In 2019, a petitioner from a village named Reni, in Chamoli, Uttarakhand, had filed a public interest petition at the Uttarakhand high court. Kundan Singh’s charge was that the Rishi Ganga Power Project, set up near the village in 2005, was resorting to environmentally...
More »Dialogues for democracy, lessons from Rajasthan -Sakina Dhorajiwala, Puma Chandra Kishan and Rajendran Narayanan
-The Hindu Federalism and good governance need engagement between people and officials, as the MGNREGA programme shows It is 45 days and counting since lakhs of farmers have gathered in Delhi protesting against the farm laws. Leaving aside the merits and demerits of the laws, many are aggrieved about the process of promulgation of the laws as it lacked any consultation with those that the laws are purportedly meant to serve. Very often,...
More »In rural India, over-reliance on digital technology has worsen financial exclusion -Rajendran Narayanan and Sakina Dhorajiwala
-The Indian Express A technological intervention must have a governance framework in which protection of rights must be fundamental and which provides more choices to the marginalised. Remember the early days of the internet, when it took several minutes to connect to the web through a dial-in modem? Or when you had to wait in line at an STD booth to make an outstation call? Since then, we have made massive strides...
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