South Asia Citizens Web

War has returned to European soil, and it seems that Europeans are not capable, or not willing, to apply the lessons they try to teach in other parts of the planet. The European Union, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, put Ukraine in an impossible position when it asked it to choose between a political pact with the EU or a close economic relationship with Russia.

Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture was held on14 May 2014 at the India International Centre in New Delhi. Three part video recording of the main event i.e. Public lecture by Prof. Mushirul Hasan titled ’Meaning, Metaphor and Martyrdom in Colonial India’ (part 1, part 2, part 3). The Lecture was organised under the aegis of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism and Dr Asghar Ali Memorial Committee. The recording of the lecture was made via South Asia Citizens Web Archive initiative (sacw.net).

We are shocked at Israel’s ongoing brutal assault on the Gaza Strip, which has caused more than 150 Palestinian civilian deaths. The kidnapping and murder of three teenage Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank was condemnable, but Israel has reacted to it by visiting indiscriminate collective punishment on the Palestinian people, without identifying the culprits.

The National Democratic Alliance government, on June 5 and June 17, notified the proposed amendments to the Factories Act, 1948 and the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. Given that the process of amendments began in 2008 and went through a number of expert committees, one would have expected the amendments to be carefully thought-out. On the contrary, they are petty, anti-labour and poorly conceived. Given also that these are the Narendra Modi-led government’s first pronouncements on labour, one can only lament the absence of a vision that a global power ought to have: that increased productivity comes from having satisfied workers, who produce quality products.

[c]ompared May 16 — the day Lok Sabha election results were declared and the BJP emerged victorious — to August 16, 1947, the day after India won its independence and the erstwhile British rulers finally left the country.