South Asia Citizens Web

[10 April 2008 ]
Sex work and misguided anti-trafficking efforts
Anti-trafficking policies may start with good intentions of helping people out of situations of forced labour, however they have often become focussed on raiding brothels and ‘rescuing’ women from the sex industry (male and transgender sex workers are less often targeted for rescue). Often women with irregular migration status are then deported, and others put into ‘rehabilitation’ programmes such as sewing where they earn (…)

Seminar, August 2008, No 588
IN 1970 the play ‘Gidh’ (Vulture), directed by Shiram Lagoo and produced by Satyadev Dubey’s theatre company was at the centre of a controversy in Maharashtra, eliciting strong reactions both for and against. The play was based on a Vijay Tendulkar script called ‘Gidhade’. The Censor Board asked for around 150 cuts, mostly because it found the language unacceptable. The producers, however, decided to go ahead with the play, without the censor (…)

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There has been much discussion recently on the ’great Indian land grab’, i.e., the acquisition of fertile land by the government, and the handing over of this to large-scale industry. What do these ongoing land transfers tell us about the nature of the Indian state? To engage with prevalent views about state withdrawal from the economic sphere, or its reconstitution as a regulatory entity, this paper builds a picture of the state in a liberalising landscape based on empirical evidence. It outlines the role of the state in Gujarat province, during a transfer of 30 square kilometres of forest and coastal land to a cement manufacturing and exporting operation ’Karkhana Ltd’.

Hindustan Times, July 10, 2007
There was always a sting in the tail of economic growth — whether in post-Industrial Revolution Europe or the Soviet Union and China. Expropriation of natural resources like agricultural land, forestry, tanks and rivers, at the cost of certain sections like poor peasants, traditional artisan communities, tribals and forest dwellers who owned these resources, contributed in a large measure to the growth. An intensification of the same trend is to be seen in (…)