[First published in Seminar journal in the ‘India at 75’ special issue in Aug. 2022] ON a December evening in 2021, as I was leaving the premises of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) in Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi, the guard stopped me at the gate saying that the prime minister’s motorcade was about toContinue reading “Incorporating People’s Will in Governance”
Tag Archives: right to information
Farm laws’ repeal: In India, democracy isn’t dead
Friday’s announcement on repealing the new farm laws in India affirms how no government, irrespective of the strength of its mandate, can afford to disregard voices of people emerging from the ground. Vidya Venkat [First published in The Wire on November 20, 2021.] Narendra Modi’s announcement on Friday repealing the three new farm laws isContinue reading “Farm laws’ repeal: In India, democracy isn’t dead”
Another freedom struggle
[First published in Biblio – A Review of Books dated Jul.-Sep. 2018] It is ordinary people who often make history yet historians typically focus only on the victors and the leaders associated with popular social mobilisations. That is the reason why Magsaysay Award-winning social activist Aruna Roy decided to narrate the story of how ordinaryContinue reading “Another freedom struggle”
Reclaiming the Republic
[Essay published on the occasion of India’s 70th Republic Day in Economic & Political Weekly] On the occasion of India’s 70th Republic Day, it is worth considering how the very foundational idea of a republic, in which supreme power is held by the people, is at risk despite free and fair elections. To arrive atContinue reading “Reclaiming the Republic”
An anthropologist among the journalists 