South Asia Citizens Web

In the course of my work as part of a team set up to look into the socio-economic status of Adivasi communities, there were several things I learned about the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, and the amendments to it. Here are some important questions about land and the Act that we should be asking:

Gandhi was murdered by Nathuram Godse on 30 January, 1948 while walking towards his regular evening prayer. He was shot point blank, the seventy eight year old had no chance to escape bullets. Ten days ago too, there was a bomb blast in his evening prayer. However, he had refused any security cover, and remained as open to ordinary people as ever. The two years before January 1948 were perhaps the most violent in the history of India. India gained independence from colonial rulers in August 1947. Its ’tryst with destiny’ however, came along with communal carnage. Nobody knows exactly how many Indians were killed by other Indians in the months prior to, and following the Partition of the country into two nation states of Pakistan and India.

We are deeply disturbed by media reports that the Indian government has capitulated to aggressive U.S. demands and agreed to a deal that indemnifies American nuclear vendors from the consequences of accidents caused by design defects in their reactors.

The right wing nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has projected you as the Chief Ministerial candidate in the Delhi Assembly elections scheduled for 7 February, 2015. The lawyers in all the subordinate courts of Delhi have opposed your candidature reminding the electorate about the brutal lathi charge in 1988 leashed upon them under your stewardship while you were the Deputy Commissioner of Police (North).

By no means comprehensive, but here are eight points to understand the current crisis in Bangladesh and why it appears particularly intractable.