काउंटरव्यू

By Moin Qazi* It was a time when a lot of people didn’t realize women’s boxing wasn’t in the Olympics. It was always considered a male preserve. There was a strong belief that women’s bodies were somehow too frail to box. The decision to grant it recognition for Olympics inspired many enthusiastic women who were previously discouraged from considering combat sports as career. Girls thought that women could not box, but now there are role models for them. Some of the acclaimed female pugilists stepped into the ring and answered the bell even during pandemic times. One of those who have defied the age old myths and dispelled the belief that women can’t be boxers is Nagpur’s dream girl, Alfiya Pathan. It is a rare coincidence that a girl from a conservative community overcomes such compelling odds to emerge on the boxing landscape as a shining comet. Alfiya recently won gold at the World Youth Boxing Championship organized by international Boxing Association (known as AIBA, after its Fren

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* The blaming of young people as ‘lazy, deviants, drug abusers, materialists, selfish, directionless, apolitical and other stereotypes continue to dominate public narratives. The objectives of these borderless narratives are designed to weaken young people’s ability to challenge and transform the society in which they live. The blame culture and negative portrayals are control mechanisms of old and established social, political, cultural and economic order to tame the youth power. It is a mechanism to create hopelessness and domesticate youth to normalise the crisis faced by the young people. Each generation of young people face their own problems of their times, but some problems are inherited from their predecessors. However, the challenges faced by the youth today are neither created by the young people nor promoted by them. The issues of inequality based on gender, class, race, sexuality, religious and regional backgrounds are not created by the young people

By Bidisha Chattopadhyay*, Sudeshna Roy** Little did Pandora know while opening the box that she would be the harbinger of diseases and misery. The recorded history of mankind has been dotted with deadly diseases such as plague, cholera, smallpox, leprosy, polio and various pandemic influenza, one of the worst being the ongoing Covid-19 in the recent times. These diseases owing to their contagious nature spread fast leaving no section of the society untouched. These have wreaked havoc killing and disabling people, turning systems upside down. But then all men are created equal, but some are more equal than others; these diseases have affected the marginalised sections of the society relatively more gravely. Historically, the poor, diseased and certain discriminated sections of society have suffered, but more so during the epidemics. The façade of a modern, humane society has been challenged in the present ongoing pandemic as well. The circumstances of the past have been mirrored to a l

By Birendra Ram Mishra, Ramprashan Singh, Santosh Kumar Pradhan, Sonu Khan, Gatha G Namboothiri* Most of the women in Panso gau (‘village’) gathered at a common place in their village. Situated in the Gumla district of Jharkhand, Panso is a Muslim dominated village. The Rehnuma Law Centre team started the gau mulaakat (‘village get together’) with a seemingly simple question; what do we need in society for women to be happy? Amidst responses revolving around education, livelihood opportunities, implementation of government schemes and so on, several conversations also took place on women’s rights and the problems affecting Muslim women. While talking about polygamy in the Muslim community, discussions around triple talaq naturally crept into the discourse. Amidst this, one of the women present tried correcting a Rehnuma team member and stated that men are allowed up to seven marriages under Muslim personal law. The woman who answered and engaged with the team is married to a maulana (

KP Sasi, a well-known Left-wing film director and cartoonist from Thrissur, Kerala, currently based in Bengaluru, has come up with a 12-point charter on what he calls Socialism of a Third Kind. Sent in an email alert via Dalit Media Watch, Sasi, who is son of late K Damodaran, a Marxist theoretician and writer and one of the founder leaders of the Communist Party in India, provides his perspective of the types of equal status he thinks socialism should have. Though interesting, one didn’t find in any of his 12 points what exactly his view on economy is – whether there could be economic equality, especially at a time when even Marxists agree private capital is a must for development in view of the fact that the productive forces are not ripe enough to change relations of production, supposed to be a precondition of socialism. Be that as it may, the 12 point charter by Sasi was interesting, coming as it does from a person who has made powerful documentaries like "A Valley Refuses

By Moin Qazi* Vidarbha has been a fertile soil for many social reformers and intellectuals. It has played an active role in the nation’s destiny and its social, cultural and political rivulets have flown into and enriched the great sea of national civilization. One such luminary who emerged from Yavatmal was Kazi Syed Karimuddin. He rose to be a great criminal lawyer of the region and played a critical role in the drafting of the Indian constitution. Kazi Karimuddin was born on 19 July 1899, at Darwah in Yavatmal district of Maharashtra to Kazi Syed Nasiruddin and Dayanath Begum. He had his school education at Mohamedan High School, Amravati. He graduated from Morris College, Nagpur and obtained his postgraduate degree in economics from Aligarh Muslim University. He later qualified for law. He married Qadirunnisa Begum (May 24, 1926) . Kazi Karimuddin had an active presence in social, legal, judicial and political circles in Yavatmal. He was Vice Chairman, District Council (1924-28) S

By Birendra Ram Mishra, Ramprashan Singh, Santosh Kumar Pradhan, Sonu Khan, Gatha G Namboothiri* Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karyakram (PMJVK), anchored by the Ministry of Minority Affairs, is the revamped and restructured version of the Multi-sectoral Development Programme (MsDP). A Centrally Sponsored Infrastructure Support Scheme, PMJVK aims to provide the minority communities with socio-economic infrastructure facilities in the field of education, health and skill development. It is one of the several schemes covered under the Prime Minister’s New 15-Point Programme for the Welfare of Minorities, launched in 2005. It was launched in 90 Minority Concentrated Districts. However, since the size of the districts were too big, the benefits seldom reached the grassroots. Thus, in 2012-14, the focus was shifted to Minority Concentration Blocks (MCB), Minority Concentration Towns (MCT) and Clusters of Minority Concentration Villages (Cluster) to ensure that the grassroots level communities ar

Stone carved from Pindwara, Rajasthan, for US temple A senior trade union activist based Ahmedabad, Ashim Roy, forwarded an explosive article published in the New York Times , titled “Hindu Sect Is Accused of Using Forced Labor to Build N.J. Temple”, claiming he has been behind the support to the workers who have charged the temple authorities in New Jersey of exploitation.

By Poornima Bisineer, Sandeep Pandey* As the second more virulent wave of coronavirus rages on, the urban areas seem to be more adversely affected compared to the rural areas. Although, there are cases and deaths being now reported from rural areas too but the numbers in cities is disproportionately higher. And within the cities the better off localities seem to be more adversely affected than the slums, although ironically slums are more densely populated and because of this it is not possible for people in slums to maintain physical distancing and most people here are carefree about putting on masks. Given that about half the people in India are malnourished and anaemic and most of this population would presumably be in rural areas or urban slums, deprived sections of population seem to be coping with coronavirus in a far better manner than the well-to-do section of society, comes as a surprise. What are the inferences we can draw from the abovementioned observations. The rural and u

Letter to Gujarat chief secretary Anil Mukim and principal secretary, health and family welfare, Jayanti S Ravi on the need to accelerate health education-related activities amidst COVID-19, especially in rural areas: *** Through this letter we would like to bring to your notice following points based on our constant contact with the poor in rural areas: 1. An atmosphere of fear: There is an unprecedented atmosphere due to the constant news of the ongoing disease in the country. In this situation, what is most needed is to educate people. There is a need to reduce fear among the people and educate them on how to take precautionary measures against the disease. 2. Lack of basic amenities: The biggest fear among the rural areas is failure to get oxygen. In addition to explaining that not every sick person needs oxygen, it is also important to measure the amount of oxygen so that people become less fearful of the disease. It is not possible for us to deliver one pulse-oximeter to each hom

By Jyoti Mhapsekar, Gazala Paul* When a few women activists from Mumbai launched Stree Mukti Sanghatana, little did they know that they were going to be pioneers in urban zero waste management. Stree Mukti Sanghatana (SMS) meaning ‘Women’s Liberation Organisation’ was established in 1975 by Jyoti Mhapsekar, Sharada Sathe and others to bring women’s issues in the public domain and consciousness. It is best known for its flagship play, “Mulgi Jhali Ho” (A Girl Child Has Born), which inspired women from all spheres of life to look at the women’s issues with a fresh perspective. SMS, an apolitical voluntary organisation, has raised women’s issues irrespective of caste, class, creed, religion, language and nationality. For more than a decade SMS used the medium of play to create awareness, launched a magazine named “Prerak Lalkari” (Clarion Call), campaigned across Maharashtra on equal status to women, and started Family Counselling Centres for women in distress. In nineties, it extended it

Chandra Vikash* answers the question: After Modi who? *** With the election results in five states on May 2, and more than a hundred million Indians who have petitioned online with hashtag #ResignModi together with the resound drubbing by the global media projecting him as a narcissist and a disaster, it is a bygone conclusion that Modi should resign or will be forced out by the people very soon. In such an event, do we have a replacement for him in place? After Modi who? I don’t see anyone from the existing power circle – as coming forward or finding support with people given the widespread anger and resentment. It will therefore have to be a dark horse who can rise up to the challenge to bring together India’s diversity and differences, conflicts and contradictions and transform them into new synergies and opportunities to rise up and to save the country from sinking further into despair and disillusionment. In such a scenario, fully aware of our deep and complex challenges at this

By Dr Gurinder Kaur* Summit on Climate hosted by United States President Joe Biden has come to a successful conclusion. It was attended by leaders from 40 countries. In his inaugural address to the summit, Joe Biden said that the average global temperature is rising so fast that we now have very little time to control it. So we need to act quickly without any delay. To combat this problem, Joe Biden has taken the initiative to almost double the carbon emissions reduction targets (26-28 per cent) committed by the United States in the Paris Climate Agreement. The United States will now cut carbon emissions by 50 to 52 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030. In addition, Biden has said that his government plans to zero carbon emissions from the power sector by 2035 and from the entire economy by 2050. In the United States, $2 trillion has been earmarked for infrastructure transformation, of which $174 billion will be spent on electric car infrastructure. “Even though we are all in a crisis rig