The National Alliance for Climate and Environmental Justice (NACEJ) strongly condemns the raids, searches, and intimidation of climate activists Harjeet Singh and Sanjay Vashisht by Indian enforcement agencies.
Recent actions by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and allied agencies—reportedly based on alleged violations of foreign exchange regulations, vague claims of threats to “energy security,” and unsubstantiated intelligence inputs—have been carried out without transparency or disclosure of credible evidence. Public reporting indicates reliance on anonymous official briefings, rumoured intelligence reports, and speculative allegations, with officials unwilling to come on record. Continue reading Deal With the Problem, Not the Activists; Control Polluters, Not Those Demanding Accountability! – NACEJ→
[This letter was written by Gayatri Devi, as the opening segment of the series of analyses that Althea hopes to collectively publish in the wake of the atrocious judgement passed by the Ernakulam Principal Sessions Court, written by the controversial judge Honey M Varghese, exonerating Dileep aka Gopalakrishnan in the actor assault case of 2017. The reflections on Dileep-supporters’ responses to it were written by J Devika.
In 2017, a leading female actor was kidnapped on her way back from work and raped by six men in a moving vehicle on the roads of the city of Kochi. The lead-rapist claimed to her that he was hired to do it. The alleged role of the actor Dileep in commissioning the horrifying act of violence, which was also filmed, has been at the centre of public outrage from 2017 to this day. Dileep’s role seemed to be strongly indicated by circumstantial evidence, however in the course of the trial, the advantages that he enjoyed seemed to surface repeatedly. The whole trial appeared to be an extended punishment of the survivor, and the culmination of it therefore was hardly unexpected. Nevertheless, the public, overwhelmingly with the survivor, has not taken the judgment lightly.
We believe that it is our feminist political responsibility to develop a critical discourse on on the normalization in Kerala of the insecure masculine that Dileep and his supporters represent, over the past three decades. The material we hope to examine includes the judgement itself as well as the many films that Dileep starred in, from the so-called ‘serious’ film he acted in directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan, to his many slapstick comedies which became popular. The series is anchored by Gayatri Devi, and others will also contribute. This is the first in the series.]
Dearest Bhavana:
When I first heard the verdict in your 2017 case, in my mind, I silently thanked the fortuitousness of your name, “Bhavana.” Your name “Bhavana” means “imagination.” I thanked your name, because I believed that the strength to process the disillusionment and dissatisfaction that beset you upon hearing the wrong verdict was contained in your name. You must remember this fact. You must not forget this fact. You own a precious name. Your name embodies a precious truth.
Following is a statement issued on 10 December 2025, by over 50 organizations and 200 plus individuals on the reported adoption of the “Aadhar model” by some other countries.
We, concerned Indian citizens and organisations, are alarmed to note that efforts are being made to promote biometric identity systems similar to Aadhaar in other countries.
Aadhaar is India’s unique identity number, linked with a person’s biometrics (fingerprints, iris and photograph as of now). The number was rolled out with fanfare from 2009 onwards. The use of this number, and of Aadhaar-based biometric authentication (ABBA), was promoted to the hilt by the Indian government in close collaboration with the IT industry. Aadhaar was supposed to be voluntary, but it quickly became clear that living without it would be very difficult for most. Today, it is as good as compulsory. Most social benefits are out of reach without Aadhaar.
[Earlier this year, Kerala government sought the permission of the central government to kill wild animals that “post a threat to life and property”, declaring human-wildlife conflict a state-specific disaster. As wildlife-human conflicts rage with a new intensity across different parts of India, the author underlines the need to go beyond knee-jerk reactions and put in place proper policy measures. The issue itself is highly controversial and even emotive and we present this essay here to put things in perspective and proposes some measures that are currently being debated among wildlife enthusiasts. – AN]
Photo courtesy Biplab Hazra and Think Wildlife Foundation
On the 24th of Nov 2025, a 70-year-old Adivasi woman was tending her goats on revenue lands near Masinagudi in Tamil Nadu, when she was killed and dragged into the bushes by a Tiger. It paid little heed to the shouts of witnesses who saw it moving the body to a nearby waterhole. Between late October and November, multiple attacks on people and livestock were reported from the Nugu region near Nagarhole in Karnataka, leaving 3 farmers dead and one critically injured. Including one farmer who had just recovered from a broken hip bone caused by an earlier elephant attack. In response to intense public pressure, over 23 tigers (including many cubs) have been captured from non-forest areas in a span of one month. A huge number for a small rural landscape around two sanctuaries. In many cases, operations were hindered by mobs, who screamed and pelted stones upon sighting the animal, leading to heightened aggression. One of the tigers was found to have a festering snare wound, while another was the mother of 5 healthy cubs. Things took an interesting turn, when experts found it hard to match one of the Tigresses to existing wildlife databases. Raising the possibility that she might have been completely raised outside protected areas. Nor were they all transitionary, weak or infirm animals. Some of them were found to be healthy individuals, simply finding new spaces to eke out a living. It is unclear what the department intends to do with all the captured tigers and cubs. If they end up in captivity, that would be a tragic outcome that serves neither the individual animal nor the species. Continue reading Wildlife-Human Conflict – Non-intervention is No Longer a Choice: Sandeep Menon→
Today, exactly 266 days after it began, the ASHA workers’ protest led by the Kerala ASHA Health Workers’ Association vowed to continue the protest in a new form. Since the evening before, news channels and in the morning, newspapers, were claiming that the protest had ‘ended’ or was going to be ‘wound up.’ The meeting the KAHWA organised in front of the State Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram was both a celebration of the victory the workers had secured over the hubris of the CPM and its lord and master, the Chief Minister of Kerala. But more importantly, it was a declaration of the workers’ determination to continue the struggle. The local body elections are imminent, and the protesting workers intend to turn their grievance into a campaign issue.
[Below is theEnglish Version of a Public Statement in Malayalam released by a group of concerned economists and social activists that appeared in the Malayalam and Kerala-based English Newspapers today (31 October 2025)]
Background: The Government of Kerala have been preparing to declare the State of Kerala as India’s First Extreme Poverty-Free State on 1 November, 2025 being the State formation day. Th government claims that this achievement was attained through sustained efforts to eradicate extreme poverty in the state since July 2021, with just 64,006 extremely-poor families identified through a survey conducted by the Kudumbashree Mission and the Panchayats and Municipalities. The criteria used, as the government claims, were (i) households with no income, (ii) not even food for two times a day, (ii) those unable to cook food even with food articles available from ration shops, and (iv) those with very bad health conditions. This makes Kerala the first state in India to attain the two Sustainable Development Goals of No Poverty and No Hunger. However, this raises a number of crucial questions. It is in this background the following public statement was issued.
Rejoinder written collectively by Anamika A, Archana Ravi, Ayana Krishna D, J Devika, Divya G S, Gayatri Devi, Shraddha Jain, Shradha S and Srimanjori Guha
[This piece was written in response to a flagrant misrepresentation of the ASHA workers’ ongoing struggle in Kerala, by Binitha Thampi and Varsha Prasad, which appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly early this month, titled “Labouring on the Margins: ASHA Workers’ Protests in Kerala and Working-class Solidarities” (Oct.4, 2025, LX, 40, 13-17). A group of us — scholars, activists, artists and others who have been closely following the struggle since its beginning — wrote a rejoinder to it. The EPW editor verbally agreed to consider it, but the edit desk insisted that it be subjected to the same peer-review process (as their special articles, it seemed).Commentary pieces, as those who have published in the EPW earlier know, were dealt with at the editorial desk, and the editor was back then obviously competent to judge whether a rejoinder to a commentary piece was a fair one or not. Now that seemingly requires a review process! That does not suit us simply because this atrocious piece of slander is aimed at an ongoing struggle, at the lives of struggling women workers, by other women steeped in academic, social, and political privilege. There is, then, the need to respond quickly, to defend the struggle from the verbal equivalent of a shower of stones thrown at it. At the same time, the very fact that B Thampi’s and V Prasad’s piece, which parrots the CPM troll position in each line and trips over themselves several times empirically and theoretically, has clearly not been subjected to peer-review by the same EPW editorial, for it would definitely would not have got published like it is now — biased in the extreme.
On 21 September 2025, The New Indian Express published an interview with Professor Irudaya Rajan about migration patterns from Kerala where the Professor characterised the rising trend of student migration from Kerala as a ‘mad rush’ and said that young people fail and don’t benefit much from migration. He also said that overseas employment as care providers, a growing form of employment in the developed countries, was a form of ‘slavery’.
Yesterday, the protesting ASHA workers marched to your residence in the pouring rain, seeking to rouse you from your utterly inexcusable stupor. Yes, over the past eight months, you tried to first crush the strike, and then to kill it by ignoring it. Who does not know that the worst form of violence is indifference?
Last week, when most mainstream media was in the middle of yet another paroxysmal bout of Islamophobia over a thirteen-year-old child’s wish to wear the hijab to school, I was thinking: why is hijabophobia the most acceptable manifestation of the hatred of Islam in Kerala? Why is it that it seems to provoke many non-Muslim women to the point of anti-Muslim hysteria?
Finally, I am able to understand why the government of Kerala, led by a leading communist party, the CPM, is so doggedly against the demands of Kerala’s internationally-celebrated ground-level women health workers — the ASHA workers — who have been on strike since February 2025.
‘So you are the little woman who wrote the book that made this great (American) civil war’ — Abraham Lincoln to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
The Writers’ Police !
Bruno Fulgini, a nondescript employee at the French Parliament, would not have imagined in his wildest dreams that his tedious and boring job at the Parliament library would lead him to a treasure hunt of another kind.
Nearly two decades back one witnessed him metamorphose into an author and editor, thanks to the sudden discovery of old files of the Paris police, which provided details of its surveillance work done way back in 18 th century. A report filed by AFP then, quotes Fulgini tell us that ’Beyond criminals and political figures, there are files on writers and artists. In some cases, they go far in their indiscretions.’….
It was clear to these protectors of internal security of a tottering regime that the renowned literati then viz. Victor Hugo, Balzac or Charles Dickens, might be writing fiction, but their sharp focus on the hypocrisy of the aristocrats or the livelihood issues of ordinary people is adding to the growing turmoil in the country. They knew very well that they might be writing fiction for the masses but it is turning out to be a sharp political edge that hit the right target and is becoming a catalyst for change.
The Parisian police was engaged in tracking down the daily movements of the writers, was more subtle in its actions; its present-day counterparts in the West do not seem to have such patience.
The strongest democracy in the world namely the US has of late become a site of an ’unprecedented’ ’Multi-level barrage of US book bans’ as per PEN America [1]….
And now there are indications that the biggest democracy in the World namely India is keen to follow the footsteps of the strongest democracy ? Or it is too early to say that .[ Read the full article here : http://mainstreamweekly.net/article16227.html
The CCG’s concern that the proposed PPOHS Act is ‘unconstitutional’ and is an ‘open invitation to ‘oppressive misuse’ needs to be heeded.
Image : Courtesy Fiickr
Whether history will repeat itself, that is the question being asked about Punjab government’s renewed attempt to enact a law supposedly against ‘sacrilege’?
Anyone who is a keen observer of the social-political developments in the state knows very well that it has a history of such efforts (2015 and 2018) where similar attempts were made to amend laws related to sacrilege, and both attempts proved unsuccessful as they failed on the yardstick of constitutionality.
As per reports, the proposed Punjab Prevention of Offences against Holy Scriptures Bill, 2025 (PPOHS Act), which was recently referred by the state legislature to a committee for further discussion, has come under the scanner of experts of the Constitution and concerned citizens.
A leading voice among them, namely the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG) — a platform of retired civil servants and diplomats– has in an open communication underlined how Punjab government’s proposed ‘PPOHS Act’ is ‘unconstitutional’ and is an ‘open invitation to oppressive misuse’ .
[ Atranslation of the statement from the Kerala Feminist Forum is appended to ours. Both are translated by Gayatri Devi, a member of Althea.]
The way political parties and mainstream media in Kerala have framed the public discussion on the complaints against Rahul Mankoottathil comes as a real shock to anyone who sees Malayali women as citizens with equal rights and equal dignity, and to those who are committed to the welfare of children.
How saffron forces weaponise ignorance and stigmatise intellectauls
Silence gives consent
[Qui tacet consentire videtur – In Latin]
“Intellectual terrorists” are “more dangerous than cross-border terrorists”
These were the pearls of wisdom of the then Human Resource Development minister, who was addressing a conference of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (December 19, 2001). Murli Manohar Joshi had even asked the ‘nationalist youths’ to counter ‘both types of terrorism effectively.’
…It would be 25 years soon since these objectionable remarks were targeted at India’s topmost historians, scholars, public intellectuals, even provoking followers to deal with them effectively’ like the way they deal with ‘cross border terrorists.’
Later commenting on these controversial remarks, the legendary historian Romila Thapar had famously said: ‘And then the government fell. But the books continued!”
Time for Thought Police?
As everybody can see, there is a sea change in the situation since the past more than a decade in this part of South Asia…
…..The target of attacks has now become broader, more expansive and more unpredictable. It is no longer restricted to ‘leftist’ ‘progressive’ writers, historians.
The recent move to ban 25 books on Kashmir history at a single go ‘for propagating false narrative and secessionism‘ — written by a spectrum of national and international scholars — which even do not share a similar world view, books which had been in circulation for years, even decades together is a case in point.
I will share what I have learned about the process of transforming complex systems, the changes necessary in ideologies, and in the way in which public policies are being made, for India to progress towards its vision of poorna swaraj. The following points indicate an outline of the argument I plan to make in the talk:
• Global governance has broken down. The world is in disorder.
• India is strategically vulnerable. It is a long way off from its ‘tryst with destiny’ of poorna swaraj.
• India must become much more self-reliant, and less dependent on the US and China to protect its strategic autonomy. It must find its own democratic path to strengthen its society and economy. The US (and the West) cannot provide a blueprint.
• Development and progress are processes of learning.
• Nations are complex ‘self-adaptive’ systems.
• Power and wealth in a system accumulate by a process of cumulative causation.
• The process of change must be democratic for new ideas to emerge.
I have explained such ideas in my book, Reimagining India’s Economy: The Road to a More Equitable Society,published this year, and in some previous books.
About the Speaker:
Arun Maira is an eminent author, a strategic thinker and a former member of the Planning Commission of India. He had joined the Commission at the invitation of then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh himself. Mr. Maira has had a distinguished career as an enlightened business leader and management consultant. He worked as Executive Director on the Board of Tata Motors and later as the Chairman of Boston Consulting Group. He has authored many books including Transforming Systems: Why the World Needs an Ethical Toolkit; Transforming Capitalism: Improving the World for Everyone; Redesigning the Aeroplane While Flying: Reforming Institutions; Shaping the Future: A Guide for Systems leaders; and most recently, Reimagining India’s Economy: The Road to a More Equitable Society, published in June 2025.
Could it be argued that Bombay HC’s highly debatable decision on a peaceful rally against Gaza genocide is an attempt not to inconvenience the ruling dispensation?
It was the year 1763, when Genevaís ecclesiastical assembly ordered one Robert Covelle to genuflect and listen to a reprimand for having fathered an illegitimate child. Covelle refused to kneel and turned to Voltaire for help.
Voltaire, a leading light of enlightenment, outraged at the very idea that religious authorities daring to make a citizen kneel, wrote a pamphlet against genuflection comparing the act with a tyrant punishing slaves or pedant correcting children. The rest of the philosophes rallied behind Voltaire and after six years of agitation, the Genevaís ecclesiastical assembly was forced to abolish genuflection from its code
Meera Nanda, writer and historian of science discusses, this episode in one of her monographs
Rereading this episode and seeing if around two-and-half centuries ago, the Church could be compelled to see incongruence, injustice and unreason in its own ruling, can a a similar thing be possible vis-à-vis the judiciary in the 21st century in the ‘biggest democracy in the world’?
This poser is related to a recent debatable decision of the Bombay High Court, which has rightly received enough opprobrium.
The following is an appeal made by the Citizens for Democracy to the President of India to restore the independence of the Election Commission of India.
A public appeal to the Hon’ble President of India
The apex court is seized of the matter of Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls in Bihar, which the Election Commission of India (ECI) has ordered. The matter being sub judice, the Citizens for Democracy, as a responsible organisation, a defender of people’s democratic rights, would abide by the rules and traditions and refrain from commenting on the matter. In any case, several organisations, political parties and individuals have, as petitioners, already presented their point of view before the highest court of the land. Needless to say, we are with the petitioners.
We, however, do not hesitate to do our duty to expose the sins of omission and commission of the ECI ever since the BJP government came to power in 2014. ECI, an independent constitutional body, has surrendered its autonomy to the ruling party and has become a willing tool in the party’s efforts to crush democracy in India. Things have taken many turns for the worse with every succeeding incumbent to the exalted position of Chief Election Commissioner.
EC – now a Government Department
In 2023 the Supreme Court suggested the appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner and other commissioners by a committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India and asked the government to amend the Act of 1991 suitably. The government promptly amended the Act and, as if to mock the Supreme Court, did not include the CJI in the committee. Instead, it made a minister appointed by the Prime Minister as one of its three members. With the Prime Minister leading the Committee, and one of his appointees at his beck and call, the government effectively reduced the existence of the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in Parliament, the third member of the Committee, to a permanent minority. This has brought down the ECI’s status to that of a government department. One cannot expect fairness from such a body.
The Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union are long behind us, and we’re now hurtling toward a tri-polar world dominated by America, Russia, and China. These three powers vy to shape global influence, often competing but sometimes colluding. As the saying goes, “When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.” So, the central question for this lecture is: What path are the nations of South Asia—including Afghanistan and Iran—likely to take? What alternatives and tools do they possess to navigate this landscape? Most importantly, what vision of society and power should guide them toward a viable future?
Speaker :
Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy is a nuclear physicist, author, and a prominent activist who is particularly concerned with promotion of freedom of speech, secularism, scientific temper and education. He is the founder-director of The Black Hole in Islamabad and as the head of Mashal Books in Lahore, he leads a major translation effort to produce books in Urdu that promote modern thought, human rights, and emancipation of women.
Prof Hoodbhoy received his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from MIT and has taught physics and mathematics at Forman Christian College-University in Lahore, at the Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) in Islamabad and later at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).
He is a recipient of the Baker Award for Electronics and the Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics. He was visiting professor at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland. In 2003 he was awarded UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for the popularization of science.
Here is a list of a few of his publications :
– Pakistan: Origins, Identity and Future, published by Routledge (London, New York), 2023. – Confronting the Bomb – Pakistani and Indian Scientists Speak Out, (edited) Oxford University Press, 2013. – Education and the State – Fifty Years of Pakistan, (edited) Oxford University Press, 1998. – Islam & Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, published by ZED Books, London, in 1991 with translations in Turkish, Malaysian, Indonesian, Arabic, Spanish, Sindhi, and Urdu. – Proceedings of School on Fundamental Physics and Cosmology, co-edited with A. Ali, World Scientific, Singapore, 1991.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 