South Asia Citizens Web

Down To Earth, November 30, 2008
Corporal lab
In the dusty lanes of Juhapura, clinical trials made breadwinners of poor women
When her husband took chronically ill after communal riots drove them to Juhapura, a ghetto on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, poverty made life seem unmanageable. Free will then became a matter of Rs 8,000 for 40-year-old Zainab Bi. For a sum like that she was willing to swallow an unknown pill once in three months. It wasn’t much they were asking for really, so (…)

In all the confusion and horror generated by the ghastly terrorist attacks in Bombay, a dimension which has not received the attention it deserves is the circumstances surrounding the death of Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare and two of his colleagues, encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar and Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte. The major pattern of operations involved well-organised attacks on a few high-profile sites in Colaba – the Taj, Oberoi and Trident Hotels, (…)

The Hindu, December 6, 2008
Bank payments alone are not an adequate protection against corruption in NREGA.
The ghost of corruption has haunted many public interventions in India, and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is no exception. Bank payments of NREGA wages were recently introduced on a mass scale, and projected as a foolproof remedy against corruption. Recent evidence, however, suggests that the banking system itself is not above corruption — corrective steps are (…)

The APHC must unite, eschewing ego clashes, adopt a strategy of peaceful popular mobilisation without the hartals, and meet the people’s needs. It has to establish its credentials as a responsible and credible interlocutor in the peace process.

India’s worst terrorist attack occurred not in Mumbai (November 2008), but in Bhopal 24 years ago - and it’s the kind of carnage that goes unheeded.