People

The dark, dingy room from which weaver Taufeeq Ahmed operates is tell-tale. It is crammed to the last inch. There’s barely any leg space for him, leave alone his occasional visitors. The room is poorly lit, and will never provide you with a whiff of fresh air. Taufeeq’s weather-beaten face belies his age. The thick glasses wear heavy as he leans into his loom, and he does not have to make up a face to brood. He looks every bit a man resigned to his fate. Taufeeq does not look impoverished, but...

A few weeks back an incident disappeared from the news space as mysteriously and suddenly as it had appeared. The affair in question was that of a Jarawa woman being made to dance naked for the amusement of tourists in the Andamans. A video clip appeared on the website of a British newspaper and set the word “Jarawa” trending on Twitter for a couple of days. And then the concern, outrage and all traces of the news vanished into thin air. In a 24/7 era of news bombardment, that’s bound to happen...

The state government in Manipur is forcefully evicting families living on Loktak. Since Tuesday, the state police has used brute force to chase alleged illegal settlers away from their homes, including burning nearly 200 huts. It is being alleged that the eviction is in fact a security operation, and not to preserve the environment under the controversial Loktak Lake (Protection) Act, 2006, as claimed. State government officials started burning down floating huts, khangpokshang, built over...

Rakesh Bardhan is all of eight, and studies in Class IV. At an age when children are full of dreams about what they want to do when they grow up, Rakesh is no different. Except that he asserts, “I’ll agitate against police and all type of torture of the government.” Rakesh is gutsy, hardened; he is also one of the leaders of the Balok Sena, the boys and girls seen on the frontlines of the anti-POSCO agitation in Odisha earlier this summer. Rakesh chants slogans, and mobilises schoolmates. But...

The villagers here are employed at the nearby mines as labourers. The daily wage fixed by the government is Rs 156, yet the contractor rarely pays them Rs 100. Anyone who raises the issue with either the contractor or company officials gets himself blacklisted from the roll. The village in question is Chilika Daad in Sonebhadra district of coal-rich Singrauli region in India’s Uttar Pradesh state. It stands out as a cruel example of people being displaced several times by different projects and...

It was the Punjab government’s well-guarded secret for a while. Till, of course, word trickled out, and dirt hit the proverbial fan. The coalition government of the Akali Dal and Bharatiya Janata Party did everything in their means to browbeat the farmers of a small village called Gobindpura in Mansa district of the state into submission. All fundamental rights– right to speech and expression, right to organise and struggle, right to free movement – were trampled upon by a ruthless police force...

It has been 15 years since Khajan Singh’s land went under water. A single crop earlier could have feed him and his family for two long years. But today, they are a victim of dire hunger and unmitigated malnutrition. Khajan is from Aanjanwada village of Alirajpur district in Madhya Pradesh. It is one of the 15 villages been affected in Alirajpur due to the submergence caused by the Sardar Sarovar Dam Project (SSP). The only way to reach this community is by a boat from the nearest small town. SSP...

Indians, by and large, don’t need to be told about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, leave alone reminded. We know Mohandas Gandhi had remarked at the time: “Plassey laid the foundation of the British Empire; Amritsar has shaken it.” We remember Rabindranath Tagore renouncing his knighthood given by the British. We also have been told of the Daily Herald, London, remarking in an editorial, “No blacker or fouler story has ever been told.” What we don’t know of is a man called ‘Pandit’ K Santanam...

The Playing for Change movement has launched a new video, global rendition of the classic Rolling Stones track, “Gimme Shelter.” Playing for Change is a multimedia music project created by the American producer and sound engineer Mark Johnson with his Timeless Media Group, that seeks to bring together musicians from around the world. Playing For Change also created a non-profit organisation called the Playing For Change Foundation which builds music schools for children around the world. The...

Both Brazil and India have a lot in common as economies of the future, BRIC experts would like to have us believe. But what they invariably fail to tell us is about the ruthless marginalising and exploitation of indigenous people that have been taking place in these two countries in the pursuit of growth. A community of Guarani Indians in Brazil, however, have decided that enough is enough and have retaken part of its ancestral land, having lived by the side of a highway for a year and a half...