South Asia Citizens Web

The land mafia is jeopardising precious Mangrove forests on Karachi’s coast. Influential locals enjoyed the support of the land mafia and government functionaries occupied a wide area of beaches for commercial purposes. The land mafia group headed by Haji Younis, his son Zulfiqar Younis along with other accomplices organised a violent attack on 6 May 2011 on Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF) office in Kaka Pir Village at night time and murdered two active leaders: Haji Abubakar, Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum President of Kaka Village unit and Abdul Ganai Mirbahar, General Secretary of Karachi division PFF.

The story of a petition for a direction to the Chhattisgarh government to disband and disarm Special Police Officers.

Comparing India with China according to such standards can be more useful for policy discussions in India than confining the comparison to GNP growth rates only. Those who are fearful that India’s growth performance would suffer if it paid more attention to “social objectives” such as education and health care should seriously consider that notwithstanding these “social” activities and achievements, China’s rate of GNP growth is still clearly higher than India’s.

Caught between the Maoists, the security forces and the civilian vigilante groups, the communities of Dantewada have for all purposes been abandoned by the State developmental machinery…

It is well known that the Sangh parivar has been trying to establish itself in the tribal areas for a long while. But, the pace at which it is growing has become phenomenal. Sangh’s main propaganda and ‘service’ vehicle – the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) – offers some startling figures in terms of its reach in the field of education and what it calls cultural engagement.

For instance, Chattisgarh has 2,490 ekal vidyalayas, while Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal and the Northeast have 1,590, 2,160, 1,534 and 2,681 such schools.