South Asia Citizens Web

The free Sri Lanka in which I was born no longer exists. Our country has entered a Dark Age characterized by tyranny and state-sponsored terror, where the government publicly, cynically and unapologetically equates democratic dissent to treason. The sinister white van in which the state abducts its perceived enemies including journalists, many of them never to be seen again, has become a symbol of untold dread. Yet, we need to remember that violence against journalists is only the tip of the iceberg. Tens of thousands of ordinary Sri Lankan civilians - men, women, children, and the aged-have been herded into concentration camps where they are held against their will. There they languish in the most horrible of conditions, trapped behind barbed-wire fences and beneath the radar of a world which, perhaps rightly, is more concerned with the arguably greater tragedies unfolding in places such as Darfur. But what has been their crime?

This documentary uncovers the health effects of radiation exposure on the people who live in the viscinity to the uranium mining town of Jadugoda
This short documentary by Shriprakash is based on a study conducted by the Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD Patna chapter) in and around villages of Jadugoda uranium mine with help of JOAR (www.jadugoda.net). IDPD is Indian chapter of Germany / US based International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW - A Noble (…)

After siding with Rookmangad Katawal in his brazen defiance of the civilian government in Kathmandu, India has predictably washed its hands of the consequences by claiming “what is happening in Nepal is internal to Nepal.” The reality is that South Block is up to its neck in the crisis that has emerged there and India is likely to suffer the consequences if the imbalance in civil-military relations that has been recklessly introduced in yet another part of South Asia is not corrected quickly and amicably and the peace process unravels.

How is labour to be conceptualised in the present context? On the one hand, there are the claims of the new economy that old forms of labour are being transformed and reformed; on the other, there is the reality of informalisation, casualisation and dispossession. This article looks at the various forms of labour in the new economy and argues that the process of informalisation of labour can only be understood in terms of the concept of primitive accumulation. From this point it moves on to discuss the implications of such accumulation for democracy and citizenship.

The Statesman
IT is an insane system that puts behind bars a medical doctor whose heart is with the most impoverished sections of Indian society. It is two years since Dr Binayak Sen, the internationally renowned medical doctor and human rights activist has been jailed. He will complete two years on 14 May 2009. Since his imprisonment different groups of human rights activists have been putting pressure on the UPA government to release Dr Sen, whose benign nature is known to all. He would (…)