South Asia Citizens Web

Khawar Mumtaz, Chairperson National Commission on Status of Women and leading women’s rights activist talks about the society’s reaction to rape cases, recourse to justice and media’s all-intrusive coverage

Three consecutive terrorist attacks in Peshawar — which have killed and injured hundreds of innocent people — reflect a growing impatience of the Taliban for the ‘pre-selected” candidates of 2013 elections to deliver to their demands.

A series of floods hit India this the past monsoon season, from Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh to West Bengal — it wasn’t only Uttarkhand. Javed Iqbal travels to the Narmada valley, the site of one of the recent disasters, where political forces and the administrative system revealed a worrying lack of motivation when it came to responding to the man-made disaster.

If one goes through majority of the mainstream media reports on the Muzaffarnagar riots, which displaced nearly 40000 Muslims and killed at least 50, the most important discourse that emerges is one of ‘administrative failure.’ Most reports rallied behind the notion that the riots could have been prevented if not for the state government’s laxity and delay in deploying troops in and around the riot-prone areas. However, while part of this hypothesis has some merit, it has also become a sophisticated way to couch the Sangh Parivar’s diatribes against Muslims. ‘Administrative failure,’ presented as the ‘most important angle’ of the riots has had a shrouding effect on the role of Sangh Parivar-led communal campaigns such as ‘love jehad’ in perpetuating the riots.