South Asia Citizens Web

The report shows how it has not been proved through the investigation and trial that any workers or in particular the 31 convicted Maruti workers were responsible for the violence or the fire at the Manesar unit on 18 July 2012. Similarly it is also not established without reasonable doubt as to who was responsible for Awanish Dev’s death. There is no clear evidence to link the accused to the crime. And yet these workers have been convicted and given extremely harsh punishment. The judgment seems to have served the purposes of the company in providing the alibi for criminalising and imprisoning active union members and workers.

Historically, Sri Lanka is an interesting case; in terms of the history of import substitution regimes, the early emergence of neoliberal policies, the over-determination of politics by nationalist movements and for decades when the war isolated its northern region from neoliberal globalisation. Neoliberal policies in Sri Lanka were initiated before the rise of Reagan and Thatcher in 1977 with the authoritarian regime of President Jayawardena (Herring, 1987; Lakshman, 1980). The politics in the country both before and during the neoliberal era were shaped by Sinhala Buddhist and Tamil nationalisms as well as populist measures.

Avijit Roy – a prominent secularist and atheist – had earned his share of friends and enemies since 2001 after he set up the Mukto-Mona website. It was the first platform of its kind for Bengali atheists, agnostics, freethinkers and secular writers. His wife, Rafida Bonya Ahmed, was one of its contributors. On February 26, 2015, the couple became the target of their enemies when machete-wielding attackers tried to silence them forever outside the Dhaka Ekushey Book Fair. Brutally attacked, the duo lay in a pool of blood outside the bookfair premises.

Every time Pakistan test-launches a Shaheen or India an Agni, subcontinental testosterone levels shoot sky high. The fiery plumes carry aloft a nuclear-capable missile that can lay a city to waste. Iranians, though not nuclear, have their Ashouras, Emads and Shahabs. As for the North Koreans, they celebrate with fireworks and street parties when their Little Rocket Man sends up an ICBM to annoy the Deranged Dotard who, in turn, threatens them with total annihilation.

Contemporary India is showing increasing signs of ‘competitive’ authoritarian populism (Levitsky and Way, 2010). The mainstream political discourse in the country is dominated by the sectarian religious forces of Hindu nationalism or Hindutva, serving as the agency of a development narrative that promises to return India to its ‘greatness of yore’. In this paper, we examine the case of Noida, an upcoming satellite township adjacent to the capital New Delhi, to describe a process of spatial upheaval that is leading to continuous practices of ‘othering’. These processes are enabling the Hindutva forces to take root locally. In effect, we argue that local space-making has an intrinsic relationship with authoritarian populism, and it therefore needs to be at the analytical forefront.