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New Delhi: The Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) – a forum for women in media professions – has conducted a study on how hegemonic and toxic masculinities play out on India’s TV news. A group of NWMI volunteers studied 185 news and talk shows across 31 TV channels in 12 languages for a week in September […]
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman started the innings of her much-awaited 2022 budget speech by emphasising her macro-fiscal priorities. Thus, we were treated to terms such as a vision of ‘India at 100’, in areas of ‘inclusive development’, ‘productivity enhancement’, ‘sunrise opportunities’, ‘energy transition’, ‘climate change’ and ‘PM Gati Shakti’. The PM Gati Shakti Programme identified […]
“Saale chamaro tumhari kismat bahut tez hai, tum America pahunch gaye. Translated, this means, ‘you chamars – a slur used by ‘upper’ caste members – you’re in luck to have made it to America.’ The casual, casteist insult was one of many Neha Singh grew accustomed to on campus, as a student at California State University a decade […]
New Delhi: The Economic Survey 2021-22 lists various steps the Union government took last year to battle COVID-19. From vaccination to testing and infrastructure development, it enumerates various points. But the two waves of the pandemic that happened in India are summed up just in these lines: “During the first wave, the cumulative number of COVID-19 […]
As another Union Budget rolls around, there is a palpable air of disenchantment and disinterest. Last year was meant to be the ‘make or break’ speech from Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Notable for its acknowledgement of the dire fiscal situation, little else stands out from the event. This year, even the pre-budget energy one […]
New Delhi: The Kerala high court on Monday (January 31) deferred the order issued to Malayalam news channel MediaOne TV by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting revoking its license to broadcast till the next hearing date, LiveLaw reported. The news channel went off the air on Monday, reportedly because its license was revoked by […]
J.S. Bandukwala, a well-known rights activist who spent many years working towards a more inclusive society, passed away on Saturday morning in Vadodara, Gujarat. He was 77 and is survived by a son and a daughter. According to his doctor, Bandukwala, who lived alone, had been unwell for the last week due to age-related complications. […]
Philanthropy, meaning altruistic giving for the love of mankind, is one of humanity’s nobler instincts. At the same time, it has ever been a way of legitimising and whitewashing ill-begotten wealth, and of acquiring a status and a place in history through the benefactions. Private philanthropy has never been bigger than at present (one estimate […]
When I was a child, my father, a devotee of the Hindu god Shiva, would walk to a nearby temple every Monday to worship his favorite god. We lived in a one-room house in a small village in Gujarat. My father was a farm worker, and his visit to the temple on Mondays was one […]
Underpinning the crisis of rampant unemployment besieging the Indian economy is the struggle of the Narendra Modi government in tapping India’s potential as a global manufacturing hub. Ironically, redesigning India’s economy into such a hub was the very premise of the ‘Make in India’ initiative, the failure of which is central to the larger arc […]
The government decision came after the Arya Vysya community objected to Chintamani Natakam. The Andhra Pradesh government on Monday, January 17 issued orders to ban Chintamani Natakam, a popular play across the state. The play is particularly enjoyed with much fervour in rural areas. The government decision came after the Arya Vysya community objected to the […]
Though the shortage is real, the right solution is not to coerce the states to surrender a large number of their officers to the Centre. Unfortunately, IAS officers working for their entire career in the states hardly come across people who can inspire them either ethically or intellectually. They are surrounded by politicians, traders and […]
On January 12, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) in a letter to the chief secretaries of all state governments, set out a ‘Proposal for Amendments in IAS (Cadre) Rules, 1954’, saying that an officer whom the Union government wishes to put on deputation would “stand relieved” from his or her respective cadre, irrespective […]
Bharatiya Janata Party’s decision to field chief minister Adityanath from his home turf, the assembly constituency of Gorakhpur in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh polls has spurred every opposition party into action as they scramble to field their most influential candidates from the area. Gorakhpur has been a BJP stronghold since 1989 with the party winning the seat […]
The Delhi high court on January 11 decided to hear petitions challenging Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which exempts forceful sexual intercourse by a man with his wife from the offence of rape, or provides a sort of “marital rape immunity” to men. It said that irrespective of marital status, every woman has the […]
A top university system in the United States announced that they will add ‘caste’ as a protected category, a move that has been welcomed by several rights groups fighting against caste-based discrimination in the country. California State University System, which has over 23 campuses and eight off-campus centres enrolling 485,550 students with 55,909 faculty and […]
In a strange turn of events, the Gujarat state government informed the Supreme Court on January 16 that it has approved 68,370 claims for ex gratia for COVID-19 victims – while the state’s official cumulative death toll was only 10,094 until then. According to Times of India, the state wrote in its compliance report for the apex court […]
Even as the Samajwadi Party was caught in a family feud ahead of the 2017 assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, with party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and his brother Shivpal Singh Yadav on one end and chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on the other, Aparna Yadav, Mulayam’s second daughter-in-law, had drawn attention. As Akhilesh was pulling […]
No project of citizenship in India can be complete without an institutionalised ethic of civility. To this effect, the project of Swachh Bharat was an important step in building toilets to provide basic sanitary facilities and also a stepping stone to the idea of a dignified life. Access to cleanliness is a necessary mode of […]
‘Yeh desh hai veer jawano ka…’ echoed on the cordoned-off streets of Rajpath as masked policemen guarding the barricades stared at anyone who passed by until they left. The yesteryear song from Naya Daur infused the dewy January wind with an instant sense of patriotism. It overshadowed the cacophony on both sides of the barricades: running traffic […]
