Counterview

By Raj Kumar Sinha*  The city is suffocating in the name of development, a bitter reality that defines modern urbanization. In our relentless race toward modernity, we are erecting concrete jungles while losing the very open air we need to breathe. Lush green spaces and trees are being felled to make way for high-rises and malls.

By Dr. Palash Bhattad   Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) carries a promise it has yet to fully fulfil. Its distribution resembles a pattern familiar from economics and sociology: the Matthew effect, where existing advantages reinforce themselves rather than diffuse. Regions that already possess greater industrial and institutional capacity may be better positioned to attract resources intended to address developmental disparities.

By A Representative   The Special Court for SC/ST (POA) Act in Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu, delivered a judgment on 2 August 2021 in the case of a Dalit youth and a 22-year-old Vanniyar (OBC) woman who were allegedly forced to consume poison after they married against family opposition. Regrets  Valjibhai Patel, noted veteran Dalit rights leader from Gujarat (photo) , not enough effort has been made to bring the judgment’s positive implications to light. According to Patel,  the verdict — one death sentence and 14 life terms, including for police personnel — is a landmark “rarest of rare” atrocity case under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and sends a message that Dalit lives matter and that collusion and cover-up will not be shielded.  The judgment was delivered by Judge Thiru S. Uthamaraj in Case No. CRMLP/503/2021 (CNR No. TNCD/210005242021). 

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak   In Belgrade’s electoral battlegrounds, Serbian students have revived the radical spirit of the poem “Marija Ručara (Marija the Washerwoman)” by Aleksandar Vučo and Dušan Matić. Published in 1935, the poem continues to resonate in the bourgeois politics of contemporary Serbia and beyond. The student struggle—organized around the “Student List—Students Win” and shaped by a collective, leaderless ethos—and its victory in Serbia’s recent elections have rekindled the subversive tradition of Serbian politics and society, which has witnessed many radical insurgencies, successful revolutions, and struggles for freedom. Serbian rebels defeated not only the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires but also the Serbian monarchy to achieve national liberation and radical social change.

By Vijay Prashad   Sudan’s war is usually described as an African catastrophe, Yemen’s as an Arabian conflict, and the war around Iran as a Gulf crisis. Such divisions obscure the movement of weapons, money, soldiers, and commercial interests between them. Looking from Africa’s Red Sea coast, another picture emerges. These wars have distinct origins, but they increasingly sustain one another through military patronage, competition over ports, and the destruction of civilian livelihoods.

By Bharat Dogra  Between October 1965 and early 1966, somewhere between half a million and a million Indonesians were killed. Some estimates go as high as two or three million. Over a million more were imprisoned, many tortured. The New York Times called it "one of the most savage mass slaughters of modern political history." Yet for decades the world barely spoke of it, and inside Indonesia the truth could not be told at all.

By Amitabh Kumar*   As the festival of Diwali illuminates our cities with a dazzling array of lights and sounds, it brings with it a spirit of joy, hope, and new beginnings. Yet, beneath the celebratory glow lies an often-overlooked consequence: the profound distress inflicted upon urban wildlife. While humans gather to celebrate, the very habitats that sustain birds, bats, and free-ranging animals are transformed into zones of intense stress, marked by explosive noise, blinding flashes, airborne pollutants, and toxic chemical residues.  

By Shankar Sharma*  Scores of pumped storage plant (PSP) proposals are being considered not only in the Western Ghats but across many other river valleys of India, and they raise serious ecological and social concerns. In the course of my ongoing examination of the ecological impacts of these proposals, I found a shocking number of them in Maharashtra alone. I find it extremely worrisome that a single state is considering so many PSPs within its boundaries. Almost all are located in river valleys and need diversion of forest land. The cumulative impact on the ecology and welfare of the state, and of the entire Western Ghats on which the water security of peninsular India depends, should concern all of us. Many of the listed projects have already received environmental clearance or are in advanced stages of the process, yet state governments and the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) seem nonchalant about the consequences for the whole...

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan  Some tragedies provoke public anger; others force a society to confront its systemic blind spots. The alleged assault on a six-year-old girl by an eight-year-old classmate inside a government school in Panchkula, Haryana, falls squarely into the latter category.