South Asia Citizens Web

The crippling blow to Delhi University’s academic, intellectual and democratic integrity and standing has come however over the last two years from the arbitrary decision of the Administration, at the behest of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, to rapidly and thoughtlessly impose semesterisation on a University the size of DU, swaying to the rhythms of an annual calendar. No reasons proffered, no questions to be asked, this top-down ‘academic reform’ must happen tomorrow though no one seems to know how. The merits or otherwise of semestered education apart, semesterisation at DU, driven by the immediate and long-term needs of Capital and State has brought this University to the edge of an abyss. ‘Academic reform’ has been the cloak, vilification of teachers the ruse. The implications for generations of students and employees at DU, and for Higher Education and Democracy everywhere are grave indeed.

The “Hot Run” of India’s largest and the first reactor in the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) commenced on July 1, 2011 when anti-nuclear activists from all over Tamil Nadu organized a day-long hunger strike and a complete shutdown at Koodankulam. The activists complained about the untested and unreliable VVER-1000 reactor technology, the bad quality of the construction . . .

Coming down heavily on involving vigilante group (Salwa Judum) in fighting Maoists, the Supreme Court of India restrained the Chhattisgarh government and the Centre from arming Special Police Officers (SPOs) calling the 5,000-strong force as "unconstitutional". Asking the Chhattisgarh government and the Centre to desist from appointing the tribals as (SPOs) and arming them for countering the Naxals in any manner directly or indirectly, the court said the appointment of tribal youths as SPOs is "unconstitutional". The Supreme Court of India bench comprising Justices B Sudershan Reddy and S S Nijjar gave this order on 5 July 2011 on a petition filed by sociologist Nandini Sundar, historian Ramachandra Guha, former bureaucrat E A S Sarma and others. Relevant excerpts from the Supreme Court order are posted below along with the full text in PDF.

We, the undersigned, are deeply concerned at the recent developments of accusing POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), the organization spearheading a peaceful, democratic movement for more than five years against forceful land acquisition for the proposed POSCO project in Odisha, for ‘using’ children as shields in the movement. We believe that the allegations and accusations against PPSS is an attempt to diffuse the focus of the peoples’ struggle and make a nuisance about an issue that does not hold any truth.

Land acquisition and involuntary displacement have been the fountainhead of enormous destitution of millions of invisible people since Independence. Generations of those sacrificed for ‘development’ are farmers and farm workers, and many are fragile tribal people and forest gatherers. By coercive displacement and dispossession, governments pauperise its poorest people, and its food-growers, so that the ‘nation’ can prosper and grow.