South Asia Citizens Web

this to announce a public lecture by Professor Nilakantha Rath (an economist formerly at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics in Pune and currently with the Indian School of Political Economy, Pune) at the India International Centre at 6.30 PM on the evening of 30 October 2014.

We are writing this letter with much agony and enormous concern regarding the formidable impact increase in height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam on river Narmada will have. It will adversely impact the lives of adivasi (tribal) & rural communities, submerge precious natural resources - land, water, tree cover, fish and kill the pure and pious river, Narmada. Narmada – home to the oldest of human civilizations with rare archeological monuments. We request your personal attention and intervention to to stop this wanton destruction.

The change in the ruling dispensation (May 2014) has more than one aspect which is likely to affect the very social-cultural-political map of India. Narendra Modi won the last elections with an electoral success, 282 seats for BJP, with 31% of votes polled, which is a landmark for a party. There was a meticulous planning to come to power and there were many factors bringing them to power. One was the communal polarization carried forward from the Gujarat carnage of 2002, to the one witnessed in Muzzafarnagar in 2013.

If you are a politically aware citizen of the world, there are so many issues for you to be concerned about, from IS to Palestine, Kobani to Hong Kong, Obama to Putin. Yet, there is one more that I would like to point out, an issue much closer to home. Perhaps you were apprehensive once, yet have forgotten all about it.

INCREASINGLY of late, Prof Romila Thapar is required to assume the nearly impossible role of Emperor Akbar, who, according to the official plaque at his tomb near Agra, had “created a nation out of a mob”. To her credit (and sorrow), the ageless historian stands firm among a handful of public intellectuals left in India who have refused to be pulverised by the rise of right-wing Hindutva mobs.