4th Annual RTI Lecture - Dr Pratap Bhanu Mehta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EElRx7NarpI
Dec 4, 2021 public intellectual and political scientist, Dr Pratap Bhanu Mehta. He’s speaking on the topic, “The Collapse of Civil Society: Reflections on Democracy and the Public Sphere”.
The Lecture will be followed by a discussion with Prof Ritu Dewan, VP of the Indian Society of Labour Economics, and social activist Mr Nikhil Dey.
“Civil Society Is Dead. You Need Kind Of Scale And Scope Like Our Freedom Movement To Revive It,” Says Dr Pratap Bhanu Mehta https://www.moneylife.in/article/civil-society-is-dead-you-need-kind-of-scale-and-scope-like-our-freedom-movement-to-revive-it-says-dr-pratap-bhanu-mehta/65779.html
Moneylife Digital Team 04 December 2021 One of the features of this new regime is that it will demand progressively more and more control over civil society. The idea is that civil society can act as the autonomous space, independently of the state, acting as a pressure group outside of it. We have learned shockingly or perhaps not surprisingly over the last few years that there is no such thing as Indian civil society. Let there be no illusion that in the conventional politics that we are in now, civil society is dead. We all need the kind of scale and scope like our freedom movement to revive the civil society,” According to Dr Mehta, the State is regressing on all dimensions. He says, “Instead of more transparency, we have more secrecy; instead of more decentralisation, we have more centralisation. The only thing in which the State has progressed arguably is in capacity.”..