Caste, Privatization, and Environmental Degradation: Reassessing India’s Swachh Bharat Mission
The Swachh Bharat Mission tried to create a narrative that sanitation is everyone’s job. Instead, it has ended up continuing the same old caste practices.
Category Center for Human Dignity and Development
Legal Hands on Session VI – Human Rights and the Challenges of Building a Welfare State in India
The Gender Impact Studies Center (GISC) at IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi conducted a four week Online National Spring School Program on ‘Ending Gender-based Violence – Cohort 2: Awareness of Policies & Governance’ from March 5th, 2024 to March 27th 2024.
On day 7, Adv Shalu Nigam delivered a presentation on Legal Hands on Session VI - Human Rights and the Challenges of Building a Welfare State in India.
The Collective Responsibility: Empowering Bystanders with Social Consciousness
Moral On October 26th, videos of a 12-year-old girl injured and pleading for help from a group of bystanders surfaced from Kannuaj, Uttar Pradesh. People are casually recording videos on their mobile phones as the girl asks for help. But, unfortunately, none of them helps, offers first aid or takes the survivor for treatment until a policeman carries her to a hospital.
Unfortunately, this is not the first among many such gruesome incidents of voyeurism in India. In 2012, a 20-year-old girl was molested outside a bar in Guwahati for a full 30 minutes without receiving any help. After Nirbhaya was gang-raped and left on the road to die in 2012, a significant amount of time passed before a passerby called the police. Nearly a decade later, violent sexual crimes continue to plague our nation, with people just looking on. In 2017, a woman was raped in broad daylight in Vishakhapatnam as bystanders stood and recorded videos of the act. Similarly, in 2018, a minor girl was molested in broad daylight by seven men in Jehanabad, Bihar. None of the witnesses intervened to save the girl.
Encouraging Solidarity: Advocating for Gaza and Iran to Deter Netanyahu’s War Escalation
In the interest of the Palestinian people, and in the interest of all developing countries, whose economies are stunted by higher oil prices caused by the Gaza war, Iran should repress the urge to retaliate.
The West is urging Tehran to hold its hand and not strike back against Israel for its fatal attack, albeit unacknowledged, on an Iranian embassy building in Damascus, Syria, on April 2. Not just Iran’s traditional enemies but also its traditional friends should also ask Tehran not to open another front in the ongoing deadly conflict in the Middle East. Such an attack would precisely deliver the response Israel’s beleaguered prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to provoke.
Responsibility for Combating Election Interference: Beyond the Election Commission’s Role
If the attacks on Opposition parties and leaders continue on the pretext of correcting economic wrongs, the fig leaf covering the truth of India’s democracy would wither and drop off.
The punitive actions by India’s tax authorities and the Enforcement Directorate against Opposition political parties and leaders, especially after the general elections have been notified, amount to election interference. The statutory body charged with holding free and fair elections is the Election Commission of India. It has powers to issue directives to the executive to act in a manner conducive to the conduct of free elections. Failure to check the intimidation of Opposition parties and leaders by agencies of the central government amounts to abdication of its responsibility by the Commission. If the Commission does not realise this and make amends, the Supreme Court should, suo motu, direct the Commission to act.
The Plight of Small Farmers in India: Income Disparity and the Need for Reform
Farmers’ unions in India are demanding higher wages and minimum price support, among other provisions. The Indian government’s approach to agriculture, including non-legally-binding minimum price support for crops and loan waivers have been met with mixed reactions from farmers and experts.
Action Research, Policy and Impact: A Bureaucrat’s Experience
The IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi is hosting a Four-Month Online Immersive Public Policy Qualitative Participatory Action Research Fieldwork Certificate Fellowship Cohort 2.0 from December 2023 to April 2024. On day 7 of the programme, the session today was spearheaded by Dr Purnima Chauhan, an IAS retired officer, former Secretary, Government of Himachal Pradesh, director of Himachal Pradesh Institute of Public Administration, and visiting Senior Fellow at Impri.