-Vikalp.ind.in The spread of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns in India since the last week of March 2020 have put not just people’s health concerns at the forefront, but most of the economic and social sector activities are at halt. Amidst the virus spread and subsequent lockdowns, schools, colleges, universities (educational institutions) are closed without completing the academic calendar year. To deliberate on teaching and learning processes and research activities in...
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A moment for civilisational introspection -Harsh Mander
-The Hindu There is a collective culpability in the social crime during the lockdown — of the dispossession of India’s working poor The traumatic months of the national lockdown lay bare many troubling truths about the profound estrangement of people of privilege from the working poor. They reveal a society in which the privileged are extraordinarily comfortable with inequality, and wanting in elementary empathy and solidarity. They confirm that the veneer of...
More »Concerned citizens ask state governments to transport stranded migrants to their homes
-Press release by Stranded Workers Action Network, dated 20th May 2020 We, the undersigned organizations call upon the State governments concerned to bring out all idle transport vehicles out from garages to the State and National highways to carry the workers to their home. We also request that more interstate trains be run, and in a coordinated fashion, to ensure that workers do not remain struck in overcrowded dormitories and camps....
More »Equal freedom and forced labour -Gautam Bhatia
-The Hindu The steps being taken by States, under the cover of COVID-19, of removing labour laws are grossly unconstitutional Soon after Independence, while the Constitution of a free India was being drafted, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the chairperson of the Drafting Committee, was asked to prepare a note on the idea of Fundamental Rights. In a terse document, B.R. Ambedkar observed that thus far, the purpose of Constitutions had been to limit...
More »Responding to COVID-19 at the grassroots -TR Raghunandan
-The Hindu Kerala and Karnataka have shown how democratic decentralisation has worked in their favour Mahatma Gandhi envisioned that a free India would rest on a foundation of gram panchayats, village republics that governed locally and epitomised Swaraj in practice. B.R. Ambedkar was sceptical; he described the caste-ridden, unequal village society as a cesspool. Yet, he was not unequivocally against decentralisation. Locally relevant initiatives The 73rd Constitutional Amendment mandates the constitution of panchayats at...
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