Open Forum

By Moin Qazi* Men and women should own the world as a mutual possession. ― Pearl S. Buck The Punjab Assembly has cleared the way for 50 percent reservation for women in panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) and municipal bodies. Several other states have already taken to this progressive trajectory and have 50 percent reservations for women in panchayats. Even though India’s women enjoyed constitutional equality with men, religious custom, traditional thinking, illiteracy and economic reality thwarted their freedom for long. During the last two decades the gender landscape has been slowly greening and women are now on the cusp of a powerful empowerment revolution. The issue of gender discrimination is usually exploited by political parties to appeal to their core vote, much like a travelling circus drums up an audience. After the media switches its attention away, the political circus will pitch its tent somewhere else. Gender was not a priority with the government which was content

At community nizra in Nawkata Shibodham By Aseem Mishra, Darshini Mahadevia, Yogi Joseph, Arup Das* As part of our research on Guwahati’s hill settlements, a total of six settlements were selected. Four settlements namely Seujnagar, Sanghmaghuli, Teenug-Ganeshpur and Sripur in Lalmati-Behrabari hills and two settlements namely, Mithingapuri and Nawkata Shibodham in Gharchuk have been studied. These and other settlements on hills developed as land in the plains is prohibitively expensive for migrants. Guwahati is a city of wetlands and hills, bound on the north by Brahmaputra river and in the south by Khasi-Garo hills. As a result, geographical constraints apply on the availability of land for the city to expand naturally. Migration to the city from rest of Assam and other parts of the Northeast and economic growth induced after the development of the new capital at Dispur, Noonmati refinery and trade and commerce resulted in demand for land for housing purposes, which was catered to by

By Aseem Mishra, Darshini Mahadevia, Yogi Joseph, Arup Das* The land rights conflicts in Guwahati have roots in both, historical land regimes as well as contemporary politics of the region. The Ahom King owned all the land within his territory, which he then granted extensively to temples, priests and charitable institutions. The king also gave lands to the labour that gave the state their services; these lands came to be owned by peasants in time. During colonial rule, all land ownership was transferred to the State and only occupancy rights were granted to occupants on payment of a lease tax. Occupancy rights were deemed permanent, heritable and transferable. Land tax was very high, which led peasants to selling lands and migrating to occupy wastelands in remote areas. The Forest Act under the British divested the traditional rights of tribal communities over forestlands. Instead, labour were settled in forests by their masters to harvest timber for commercial use. These labour were

Attorney General of India KK Venugopal By Venkatesh Nayak* A nine-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India is currently hearing arguments about whether Article 21 of the Constitution of India contains within its meaning and scope a guarantee of the right to privacy of individuals. The controversy was created by a submission made by the Government of India in the context of a batch of petitions that challenged the constitutionality of Aadhaar (Unique Identification- UID) a couple of years ago. According to media reports, the current Attorney General of India (AGI) has apparently conceded on behalf of the Government that while the right to privacy is a fundamental right, it is a “wholly qualified right.” This seems like a climb down from the original argument made by his predecessor in August 2015 who questioned whether there was a fundamental right to privacy at all, under the Constitution. Readers may access my two-part comment on this controversy here and here . Acc

By Moin Qazi* "I’ve got the children to tend The clothes to mend The floor to mop The food to shop Then the chicken to fry The baby to dry I got company to feed The garden to weed I’ve got shirts to press The tots to dress The can to be cut I gotta clean up this hut Then see about the sick And the cotton to pick. Shine on me, sunshine Rain on me, rain Fall softly, dewdrops And cool my brow again." .– Maya Angelou (“Woman Walk”) It is an image of resilience: women bending over rice fields, women bending over to lift sacks, bending over to tend children, bending over to draw water from wells, bending over a patch of embroidery, bending over all the time. A woman’s work is never done. The most vivid image of village women is that of a woman as a daily wage farm labour, or on a family plot, legs straight, her body forming a V as hour after hour she is bent over double, hoeing, sowing, weeding, day in and day out, under clear skies and hot sun. Sometimes this work is done with

By Moin Qazi* "His speech is of mortgaged bedding, On his kine he borrows yet, At his heart is his daughter’s wedding, In his eye foreknowledged of debt. He eats and hath indigestion, He toils and he may not stop; His life is a long-drawn question Between a crop and a crop." — Rudyard Kipling, “The Masque of Plenty” At least 217 farmers have ended their life in the month following Maharashtra Government’s farm loan waiver announcement on June 2 this year. This numbers for the month of June equal the average monthly figures in the past six months. The number of suicides has now shot up to 1,327 this year. The number is only marginally lower for the same time period last year. In June 2016, the total number of cases had reached 1,541 in the first six months. Farmer suicides are a wrenching and contentious issue and are surging upward even as the number of farmers in states is going down. It is a two decades-old national affliction that is as tragic as it is complex and is a se