South Asia Citizens Web

All of us in civil society are in debt to the authors of this report, for visiting Atali and recording the views of the people who live there. It is sad to see the latest manifestation of a pattern - it is the least we can do to remember this and understand what it means. Violence against ethnically defined groups (ethnic cleansing); ghetto-fication and suspension of lawful governance for the benefit of politically motivated criminals; or controlled mobs - these have been the recurrent features of communal politics in India for decades. They conduce to a steady process of criminalisation of the state - a process that is ongoing.

Veteran Journalist, Former MP and once a leading figure in communist movement in Punjab & Chief Editor of Nawa Zamana Newspaper Jagjit Singh Anand has passed away.

The Government of India has once again taken steps that violate the National Food Security Act. In spite of the Act stating that identification of beneficiaries must be completed within one year of commencement of the Act, through executive orders it allowed postponement of implementation three times. Now another provision of the Act is being violated through the new PDS Control Order through which it seeks to kill the Antodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) aimed at providing food security for the poorest of the poor.

Even as it claims to be fighting the perception that it is anti-poor, the Modi government has just dealt a big blow to the poorest of the poor: the planned phasing out of the Antyodaya programme under the Targeted Public Distribution System (Control) Order 2015. This move is unjust and illegal.

This report published by Anhad documents the intense and multi pronged attack on democratic rights of citizens and on secular values enshrined in India’s constitution by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The report takes stock of the first full year of the Modi Government from June 2014 to June 2015. This 194 page report is edited by John Dayal and Shabnam Hashmi and has been published by ANHAD a Delhi based non profit body.