19-11-2009The Indian government has ordered hundreds of paramilitary troops into eastern parts of the country where Maoist rebels have increasingly been taking control, writes Mark Tully, former BBC Delhi correspondent. There is tremendous resentment among the tribals at their neglect by successive governments, he adds.
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18-11-2009Women's political participation is a fundamental prerequisite for gender equality and genuine democracy, says Ines Alberdi, executive director, UNIFEM in an interview with Pamela Philipose. She avers that a lot has been achieved but there is still a great deal more to do.
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16-11-2009In a discussion held recently in India’s national capital, Nobel Peace Prize winners emphasised on the need for peace in today's world. They felt that that if the humanity wants to reap the harvest of peace and justice, there is a need to sow seeds of non violence, reports Swapna Majumdar.
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14-11-2009The world is going through its worst ever food crisis with over a billion people going hungry. The global economic crisis is only aggravating this crisis, says Dr Gavin Lindsay Wall, FAO India Representative. In an interview with OneWorld South Asia, he talks of the concrete steps needed to be taken to eradicate poverty and hunger.
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07-11-2009Peace process should become a tool to achieve peace and not be seen as an instrument of delaying conflicts, says Suhas Chakma, Director, Asian Centre for Human Rights in an interview with OneWorld South Asia. It’s a misconception that human rights organisations in India do not condemn violence by armed insurgent groups, he adds.
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Image: Suhas Chakma/ Photo credit: Anna Nath/ OWSA
03-11-2009Journalist Rahul Bedi does a stark recall of India’s 1984 anti-Sikh riots where Hindu mobs massacred 3,000 Sikhs following the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards on 31 October. Twenty-five years later survivors await justice.
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Image: Riots victims wait for justice/ Photo credit: Soutik Biswas/ BBC
30-10-2009For the internally displaced people living in India's north-eastern state of Assam, life is nowhere near normal. Living in refugee camps under pathetic conditions, they lack basic facilities such as clean water, sanitation and education, writes Ratna Bharali Talukdar.
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Image: Internal displacement in India, Kokrajhar district, Assam/ Photo credit: IDMC
19-10-2009Nearly 200 million people globally are victims of discriminations based on the notions of purity and pollution. Recently, a UN body deliberated on the recognition of caste as race and proposed to ensure that this scourge needs to be fought against, writes noted social activist and author Ram Puniyani.
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26-09-2009The constitutional imperatives of parliamentary democracy, developmental administration, federalism and panchayati raj are in conflict with the regulatory structure inherited from the British, says former Indian Police Service officer and scholar Kadayam S. Subramanian. That is why the governments in independent India continue to view people as danger to the state, he argues.
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Image: Kadayam S. Subramanian/ Photo credit: R.S. Negi/ OWSA
16-09-2009Bodo women in Assam, a state in northeast India, have been asserting their ethnic and nationalistic pride by participating in the struggle for political self-determination. They are now penning the grim realities of repression and mindless violence that their community is facing, writes Uddipana Goswami.
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