The signatories, including Noam Chomsky and Olga Tokarczuk, sought that the temporary order to release prisoners in light of COVID-19 be applied to these political prisoners as well.
Geography Archives: India
Inequalities are shaping how we’re fighting the Pandemic — and how we’ll remember it
COVID-19 infections in most countries have been hugely underestimated—not least because rich countries bought almost all the tests.
India’s COVID-19 crisis: A call for people’s unity
At the height of India’s COVID-19 crisis, some Chinese netizens saw retribution for the Modi government’s aggressive posture towards China. In this essay, Chinese blogger 红色卫士 (Red Defender) instead insists on internationalist solidarity and a distinction between the right-wing Modi government and the working class and low-caste peoples who suffer the most under his regime.
Two agonizing years of devastation
Ever since the outbreak of the pandemic, first recorded in India end January 2020, this Modi government’s preoccupation had never been on combating the pandemic in right earnest and saving people’s lives but on continuing to relentlessly pursue the unfolding of the RSS project.
Destitution, hunger and the lockdown
ON March 24, 2020, Narendra Modi had announced that the country would go into a lockdown after four hours! This nation-wide lockdown was to last till the end of May, after which there were local lockdowns but not a general one.
Caste, class and India’s Covid catastrophe
COVID-19 patients dying on the streets gasping for oxygen. Hundreds of wailing, desperate folks searching for hospital beds to access treatment. Even the dead denied dignified funerals, their bodies dumped unceremoniously in the rivers of India.
COVID-19: Like in Dante’s ‘Inferno’, Indians are going through nine circles of hell
Akin to how characters in Dante’s poem paid for their sins in hell, Indians are paying with their lives during a pandemic for electing a government that is utterly incompetent and bigoted.
U.S. Customs to Indian travellers: Don’t carry cow dung in your luggage
In India, doctors recently had to issue a warning against the practice of using cow dung in the belief it will ward off COVID-19, saying there is no scientific evidence for its effectiveness and that it risks spreading other diseases.
Sacred Bones: Caste and COVID-19 in Delhi’s crematoriums
With an unprecedented volume of dead bodies, Brahmins and workers from other castes are working side by side in the crematoriums of Delhi. But caste defines every choice made among the pyres.
China on the horizon as ‘world’s pharmacy’
The World Health Organisation’s approval Friday for China’s COVID-19 vaccine known as Sinopharm dramatically transforms the ecosystem of the pandemic.
In Kerala, the present is dominated by the future
Kerala, a state in the Indian union with a population of 35 million, has re-elected the Left Democratic Front (LDF) to lead the government for another five years. Since 1980, the people of Kerala have voted out the incumbent, seeking to alternate between the Left and the Right.
Behind the lives lost during the pandemic lie India’s failing public institutions
The privatisation model pursued by successive governments, in health to education, has led to the perpetuation of class and caste divides, with the poor often left to suffer.
Sexed semen—Why the technology of producing only female calves should be opposed firmly
There is a fast increasing trend in cattle breeding towards sex semen technology which will result in birth of only female calves. 90 per cent success in ensuring success (in terms of having only female calves) is claimed by promoters of this technology.
A made-in-India shock doctrine, with a little help from Latin America
While an assertive Hindutva deep state was already a work in progress under Narendra Modi, what is striking is how the contingency of the pandemic has been used to mask it with a no-holds-barred steamrolling of market reforms.
As Union Government fails, Kerala shows how to combat pandemics and protect health of citizens
THE total number of COVID-19 cases detected across India crossed over 2,34,000 on April 17, the very day Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed an election rally in Asansol, West Bengal, where he congratulated the attendees for coming in large numbers and gushed that he had not seen such crowds at a rally before.
Modi Govt’s vaccine diplomacy unravels—within India and abroad
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel has faulted India for not fulfilling its obligation to supply COVID-19 vaccines to Europe. The Politico paper quoted Merkel as saying, We now have a situation with India where, in connection with the emergency situation of the pandemic, we are worried whether the pharmaceutical products will still come to us. […]
“We will protest for as long as possible”
Farmers from Uttarakhand and northwest UP–several of whom have taken part in the farm protests–say that the state-run mandis, though flawed, are essential for their survival.
There are so many lessons to learn from Kerala
Indian farmers and agricultural workers have crossed the hundred-day mark of their protest against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They will not withdraw until the government repeals laws that deliver the advantages of agriculture to large corporate houses.
100 days of revolt, & still raring to go
As the farmers’ protest against farm laws enters the summer season, they brave high temperatures and the paucity of basic necessities
The political economy of COVID-19 vaccines
Vaccine grabs, the refusal to relax patents to enable mass production, and the use of vaccines for diplomacy run the risk that poorer nations may not be protected against Covid-19 quickly enough. This will prolong the pandemic, even for the richer nations.
