The decline of politics and of intellectual discourse is related to the struggle between politics and economics as the arbiter of the moral commons and the role of the developmental state in this fight, writes Rajesh Kasturirangan. ead (...)
The decline of politics and of intellectual discourse is related to the struggle between politics and economics as the arbiter of the moral commons and the role of the developmental state in this fight, writes Rajesh Kasturirangan. ead (...)
MEDHA PATKAR, the 56-year-old leader of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), is fighting what she calls the “final battle”. After close to three decades of protests against the damming of the Narmada river, she is battling against the Gujarat government’s attempt to raise the height of the Sardar (...)
A success story from Tamil Nadu in the field of HIV-AIDS prevention and control, involving education and communication paradigms that bring about changes in healthcare-seeking behaviour. The project’s innovation was the engagement of “high-risk group members” as community health personnel. This (...)
‘There is no doubt that South Africa will become the next frontier for "land invasions"’, writes Grasian Mkodzongi, ‘the situation in the country is a ticking time bomb. It’s almost impossible to think that a system of extreme injustice and poverty reflected across the country could be sustained (...)
While the role of technology in the political struggle in Iran and elsewhere should not be overstated, it should not be underestimated either. The "next generation" controls with which authorities aim to manage the Internet mark a shift from heavy-handed filtering to sophisticated multi-pronged (...)
Activist Kitiry Roy’s arrest is a reminder of shrinking democratic space, says Thusha Mittal. His crime — holding a public hearing; holding the State accountable; attempting to hold the Constitution to its best face. In the FIR against Roy by the Anti-terrorist cell of Kolkata Police, the above (...)
Nonviolent rights activits in Gujarat are being branded maoists and jailed, reports Parvaiz Bukhari. Dangs is the smallest and perhaps the most scenic Adivasi district of Gujarat. As you soak in the beauty and breathe the fresh air, Ashish Pawar, a young Adivasi activist acting as a guide, (...)
Denise Russell, Pluto Press, 208 p., 2010
With piracy raging in the Indian Ocean, international disputes over undersea oil and gas, and chronic overfishing, the oceans have rarely been subject to such varied and environmentally damaging conflict outside a world war. In Who Rules the Waves? Denise Russell gives us a rare insight into (...)
Africa has been catapulted into the electronic age over the past decade and a half by an almost incomprehensibly swift growth in telecommunications technology driven primarily by a massive rollout of cell phones and wireless technology throughout the continent.
While few can deny the economic (...)
In Nigeria, patterns of “religious” massacre are many decades old, but it is wrong to see this as simple “sectarianism”. A poor society facing modernisation at the hands of corrupt elites is vulnerable to the use of violence as a means of asserting economic and political power and the mobilisation (...)
The world’s public health policy-makers should focus on urban health problems, since for the last three years the majority of the planet’s population is living in cities, World Health Organisation (WHO) experts say. Read more
A discussion with the Afrikaner Resistance Movement’s Andrie Visagie on live national television has ‘brought into sharp focus a whole host of tensions, contradictions and implications of what it means to be a South African in 2010’, writes Liepollo Lebohang Pheko. Visagie’s outburst is a reminder, (...)
Two portentous results emerged from the parliamentary election in Sri Lanka. The ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) led by President Mahinda Rajapakse won a resounding victory, just short of the two-thirds majority needed for a constitutional change. And almost 40% of the electorate (...)
From Google Search to Google Earth, every move you make can be tracked by some feature of Google — and intelligence agencies are drooling over the data. Read more
India has the largest number of stunted, wasted and underweight children in the world. Under-nutrition, as a “silent” emergency, haunts the lives of millions of Indian children. Several facts reveal the magnitude and severity of the nutritional crisis facing the country. Close to two million (...)
In recent decades, Thailand has been running one of the world’s most successful national marketing campaigns. Building on its reputation for hospitality, beautiful beaches and splendid food, the tourism ministry has created an image of Thailand as an exotic paradise where travellers are ushered (...)
With this 40-page reportage published in Outlook India, Arundhati Roy becomes the first journalist to meet the Maoist rebels, or the Maoist Gonds, who are at war with the Indian state in the heart of India. Roy describes in depth how she fought her way through the forests with the rebels. She (...)
The Stockholm Programme, the latest in a series of EU agreements on security policy, was endorsed in December 2009. Based on the "principle of availability", the Programme plans to enable the cross-border collection, processing and sharing of data on a massive scale. Supposedly promoting (...)
DD Guttenplan and Maria Margaronis write in The Nation about the controversy surrounding Amnesty’s collaboration with Moazzam Begg, a former Guantánamo prisoner.
Gita Sahgad, head of Amnesty’s gender unit, spoke in the press against this collaboration and was suspended from the human rights (...)
The survivors of the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile are still scrambling to deal with the damage. Here, however, pundits are still scrambling to explain the dramatic difference in impact. Haiti’s quake on January 12 came in at 7.0 on the Richter scale, leveled the capital city, and (...)