Growing up on a coffee plantation in Karnataka in the late sixties, I have been watching and observing adivasi communities from childhood. They used to live next to the forest. Theirs was a simple life, and they seemed happy and satisfied with what they had. Later, in 1984, I had the opportunity to work with them when some adivasis approached[Read More...]
Guest post by DIPANKAR BHATTACHARYA This piece was originally published in Bangla in the Ananda Bazar Patrika and has been translated into English by Arundhati Ghosh “Freedom – you are a room in the garden, the song of the koel, the sun drenched leaves of the old banyan tree, the page of my book of … Continue reading The Subjugated Subjects of a Free Country and The Creation of the New Colony: Dipankar Bhattacharya →
The 24th edition of the Kolkata international film festival, held in November 2018, showed a surprisingly large number of films from Australia, which has never been counted among the foremost film-making nations of the world; no less than two dozen in all. It is hard to tell whether the ‘focus’ had anything to do with an increasing interest in Down[Read More...]
Co-Written by Dibyendu Chaudhuri and Parijat Ghosh Deskilling is a process of elimination of skilled labour within an economy. Separation of intelligence from muscle helps ruling class dominating both (Braverman, 1974). Advent of modern agriculture, characterised by hybrid seeds, chemical fertilisers, pesticides, etc., is considered responsible for deskilling in agriculture. In agriculture, deskilling is understood as a process in[Read More...]
The Supreme Court of India has ordered the forced eviction of more than one million Adivasi and other forest-dwelling households from forestlands across 16 states after the government failed to defend a law protecting their rights. The final country-wide numbers of forced evictions are likely to rise substantially as other states are forced to comply with the court orders. The[Read More...]
Guest Post by CONCERNED STUDENTS OF TATA INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, MUMBAI We, the concerned students of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai condemn the continuing state repression of adivasis and recent attack on human rights activist Bela Bhatia in Bastar, Chhattisgarh.
The two countries I know best are India and the US. I spent the first 22 years of my life in the former, and the following 24 in the latter, where I continue to live. Recently I returned home, after spending three months in India. The combination of what I saw there in plain view, and what I see here in America, may shed some light on why we have arrived at the climate impasse.
Soon I’ll get to what is climate impasse, but first, here is what got me motivated to write this piece, before even I could recover from the jet lag.
