Dreams of a Maoist India https://aeon.co/essays/the-rise-and-now-fall-of-the-maoist-movement-in-india rAHU pANDITA
India’s Maoist guerillas have just surrendered, after decades of waging war on the government from their forest bases In her research in central Bihar in 1995-96, the Indian sociologist Bela Bhatia concluded that the Maoist leaders ‘have taken little interest in enhancing the quality of life in the villages.’ In fact, these leaders regarded development ‘as antagonistic to revolutionary consciousness,’ she wrote in 2005.
In the meantime, the Indian state was growing impatient with the Maoists. In 2010, a London-based securities house report predicted that making the Maoists go away could unlock $80 billion of investment in eastern and central India. New Delhi began preparations for a large-scale operation to get rid of them. But, before that, the extraordinary arrest in 2009 of the Maoist ideologue Kobad Ghandy in Delhi heightened political interest in the insurgents.
India’s Maoist guerillas have just surrendered, after decades of waging war on the government from their forest bases
(2014? )Hindu nationalism was on the rise in India and, in the coming years, this term would become a ruse for the government to suppress all activism, resulting in the incarceration of civil rights activists like the human rights lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj. What also did not help is the number of body bags – of forces killed in Maoist ambushes – going to different parts of the country.
As anti-Maoist operations go on with even more rigour, a handful of those still inside the forest will ultimately surrender or be killed. How history remembers them is too early to say; but it is a fact that, had it not been for them, the much-needed focus on the hinterland of DK would not have been there.
research article based on empirical observations and focussed group discussions with farmers in tail end regions of Cauvery Delta. how farmer groups in these areas are adopting pulse cultivation from cotton to stabilize cropping cycles, buffer against market volatility across local and global markets, and avoid debt traps linked to Bt cotton farming.
Landless, nameless, essential: The story of India's women farmers https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/landless-nameless-essential-the-story-of-indias-women-farmers-3764318 Kavitha Kuruganti, October 15 is observed by the United Nations as International Rural Women’s Day and in India as Women Farmers’ Day. Although the National Policy For Farmers (2007) provided a clear and expansive definition of a "farmer", delinking it from land ownership and thereby including various categories of women farmers, this definition has not been implemented on the ground.
The day is also a reminder that most of these women still lack recognition and identity as farmers in their own right.
While patriarchy has placed most assets in men's hands, the least that the Government of India can do is redirect its DBT/DIT schemes to women farmers in agri-households. Progressive policies are also needed to redistribute asset ownership between men and women, with active incentives for gender equity.