South Asia Citizens Web

(Published earlier in: The Statesman, 25 January 2009)
Two major scams – the DDA housing allotments and the Satyam scandal – have hit the headlines almost simultaneously. Both developments follow the lynching of the PWD engineer MK Gupta by BSP goons led by its MLA, Shekhar Tewari, in UP’s Auraiya town. He had refused to raise Rs 50 lakhs for chief minister Mayawati’s birthday bash.
The housing allotment and the Satyam scam highlight the level of corruption in the country. The UP (…)

A 20 member Peace Mission (Aman Karwan) from Pakistan visited India from January 21-24, 2009.
List of Delegates Mr. Haji Muhammad Adeel (Senator Awami National Party)Ms. Farzana Adeel (Wife)Mr. Ali Haroon Shah (former member Provincial Assembly & member of working committee PML N)Ms. Asma Jahangir (Chairperson HRCP)Mr. Ibn Abdur Rehman (IA Rehman) Senior Journalist & Bureau member of South Asian for Human Rights (SAHR)Ms. Salima Hashmi (Artist &Human Rights Activist)Mr. Iqbal (…)

Israel’s ‘security’ agenda has seen the country come close to a tragic re-enactment of the policies of ethnic hatred and extermination that accounted for the suffering of its own people.
While both countries are undermined by hawkish nationalists and religious zealots, Israel and India fortunately share powerful and humane dissident traditions.

[Lakbima News, 25 January 2009 >http://www.lakbimanews.lk/special/spe7.htm]
The defeat of the LTTE will enable the Tamil community to rebuild democratic politics but the government must make the minorities feel that they have a stake in Sri Lanka’s future, says Ahilan Kadirgamar, spokesman for the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, an international network of mainly Tamil human rights and democracy activists. He also warns that the Rajapaksa regime is attempting to entrench itself as an oligarchy. (…)

Asia Society
NEW YORK, December 15, 2008 - Novelist Amitav Ghosh and philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah discuss Ghosh’s new historical novel Sea of Poppies at the Asia Society. (1 hr., 23 min.)