South Asia Citizens Web

Theatre scholars and practitioners across the country have been extremely perturbed by the unwarranted delay and seeming drift on the part of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India with regard to announcing the name of the head of the National School of Drama (NSD), the country’s most prestigious drama school with a long and important history.

Natural disasters are not new to the North Western and Central Himalayan region, but their intensity and scale has increased on account of the extreme weather events following the impact of climate change. In the last two decades, instead of taking precautions and implementing the agenda of adaptation measures in the Himalayan region, the governments have steadily been violating the environmental norms and liberalising the landuse policies. These landuse policies are designed to support the production of surplus hydropower for exporting power to metropolitan cities on the one hand, and supporting the burgeoning pilgrim traffic on the other. This year there were an estimated 2.5 crore tourists on the Char Dham route, a figure that is more than two times the population of the state. Infrastructural support for these pilgrims is closely linked to industrial development of the state.

It is highly unfortunate that the twenty-fifth anniversary of the submission of the ‘Action Plan for a Nuclear Weapon Free and Non-Violent World Order’[1] by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi before the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on 09 June 1988 during the Third Special Session Devoted to Disarmament has gone unnoticed in India and elsewhere.

We, the Women Living under Muslim Laws international solidarity network, are dismayed by the announcement that the US government is to start direct talks with the Afghan Taliban. The first round of talks is scheduled to take place in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban set up a political office in January. We demand that a very clear and explicit commitment be made to guarantee the rights of all, especially the rights of women and children by all parties involved in the talks. Justice and the human rights of all Afghan people, as enshrined in the Afghan Constitution, must be at the centre of any talks or negotiations with the Taliban or any other armed group.

Activists and monks affiliated with the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) have been a driving force for Sinhala supremacism in recent years.