South Asia Citizens Web

Today, after six decades of Independence, the Pakistani State and society is irretrievably close to a right-wing religious identity. Given the issues of politics, skewed distribution of resources and other similar problems confronted by a Third World developing State, the bulk of the poor people or even those in the middle class are made to believe that liberal secularism is part of some foreign agenda that society must stay away from. Pluralism has become a victim of such a mindset. So the Pakistani State today is not comfortable to associate with its own indigenous legacy because it extends beyond its adopted religious-cultural discourse.

Would those who encouraged the victimisers to kill in Gujarat be willing to apologise or make a conciliatory gesture to the victims? That would be a confession of guilt and guilt is what Narendra Modi is constantly denying

The Maruti Suzuki Workers Union has decided to hold a protest sit-in in the form of a two-day hunger strike on 7th and 8th November 2012. This is united protest action of the 149 workers languishing in Gurgaon Central Jail for the last three-and-a-half months, and the 546 permanent workers who have been terminated from their jobs. We have all the solidarity of the around 2000 contract and casual workers who have also been unceremoniously thrown out of their jobs.

Strong in the Rain, a new book co-authored by Japan Focus coordinator David McNeill and Lucy Birmingham, Time magazine’s Tokyo reporter, tells the story of Japan’s 2001 triple disaster through the eyes of six ordinary Japanese people. The books follows the six – a housewife, a fisherman, the mayor of the coastal city of Minamisoma, a student, a foreign teacher and a maintenance worker at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as they deal first with the shock of the initial earthquake and tsunami, then the horrific consequences of the nuclear disaster. In this except from Chapter Four, plant worker Watanabe Kai (a pseudonym) and Mayor Sakurai Katsunobu begin to realize the full scale of the triple meltdown at the Daiichi plant and what it will mean for their lives.

Every time death and destruction result after the ‘normal’ weather pattern is disrupted and hurricanes, typhoons and storms occur or vigorous seismic activity takes place that results in earthquakes and tsunamis, our clerics and even many professionals and intelligentsia describe them as proof of God Almighty inflicting punishment and pain on humanity gone astray.