South Asia Citizens Web

In the early eighties when the murmurs of protest were taking shape against the Sardar Sarovar Dam then no one had thought that the reverberations of ‘Narmada Bachao, Manav Bachao’ [Save Narmada, Save Humanity] will continue nearly three decades after that. The Narmada Bachao Andolan, the seeds of which were sown in 1985, has continued to challenge the Dam, the technocratic model of development, and kept the flag of resistance and justice afloat for the communities in the valley who are facing submergence, loss of livelihood, cultural heritage, and environmental disaster.

On 27 December 2010 a major protest meeting against the Chhattisgarh court sentence of life imprisonment of Dr. Binayak Sen was held at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. The protest had been called by PUDR, AISA, PUCL, PUCL Delhi, Anhad, HRLN, Delhi Film Archive, JTSA, Delhi Solidarity Group, AIPWA, Saheli, CAVOW, Foundation for Media Professionals, Jan Sanskriti Manch, The Group, Arundhati Roy, Kamal Chenoy, Swami Agnivesh, Harsh Mander and many other organizations and individuals

Reports on the blatant bias of certain nationalised banks in Punjab towards migrant labourers points to the pernicious nature of racism in India.

We are deeply shocked by the judgment of a Chhattisgarh court holding the human rights activist Dr. Binayak Sen to be guilty of sedition, and sentencing him to life imprisonment.

In the eyes of the government of Chhattisgarh, the crime of Binayak Sen is that he dared question the corrupt and brutal methods used to tackle the Maoist upsurge. In 2005, the state government promoted a vigilante army that spread terror through the districts of Dantewada, Bijapur and Bastar. In the name of combating Naxalism, it burned homes (and occasionally, whole villages), violated tribal women, and attacked (and sometimes killed) tribal men who refused to join its ranks. As a result of its depredations almost a hundred thousand adivasis with no connection at all to Maoism were rendered homeless.