South Asia Citizens Web

Land-grab, Law and Capitalism in India discussed by Medha Patkar and David Harvey (A video on youtube). Land has become a key issue for both neoliberal capitalism and for people’s movements. Land Acquisition Act of 1894 is used to take over land of indigenous and rural peoples today in the name of the common good. India has had 55 million people displaced by large dams.

Isolating Pakistan would simply harden the border and heighten the tension that complicates these two men’s lives. And the lives of all of us who live here. Yes, we must uncover the terror links, the facilitation, but no, we must not sharpen the paranoia or confuse the state with the people, the great majority of the people. And we must not give up on dialogue by other means. Since the death of Osama bin Laden there have been calls, mostly from abroad, to make an outcast of Pakistan. I would like to suggest we take the opposite route.

why could I not actively join the demonstration at Jantar Mantar? First, the symbols and allies that the campaign chose disturbed me: the stage was decorated with a picture of Bharat Mata, almost identical to that propagated by the right-wing RSS. Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the two ’god-men’ who dominated the campaign and whose followers contributed the largest numbers at the protest, endorse many Hindutva causes including the construction of a Ram Temple. RSS leaders like Ram Madhav were welcomed on to the stage. My fears were further confirmed when Anna Hazare declared that Narendra Modi was a ’model’ chief minister.

Conditional cash transfers” (CCTs) are a new buzzword in policy circles. The idea is simple: give poor people cash conditional on good behaviour such as sending children to school. This helps to score two goals in one shot: poor people get some income support, and at the same time, they take steps to lift themselves out of poverty. CCT enthusiasm, however, is often based on a superficial reading of the Latin American experience.

Sarmila Bose discusses her new book about the historical narratives of the 1971 civil war that broke up East Pakistan (Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War is published by C. Hurst and Co. and Columbia University Press.)