Thangminlal (Lalcha) Haokip

My colleagues have often asked me why University students from the North East do not take an active part in students' politics in mainland Indian Universities. Often times, I would find myself unable to answer this inquiry. Perhaps, a convenient straitjacket reply could be that since a majority of these students are first-generation University attendees, they cannot bear the direct and indirect financial costs of political activism which may run foul of the administration eager to terminate their scholarships. It is also discouraged by the language barriers and the differences in cultural expression.

However, over a period of time, I have come to feel that this explanation is both inadequate and incomplete because it doesn't really address some core issues that revolve around mainland campus politics. I have developed a dislike to my own response as no one could truly be apolitical.

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Naveen (Nijam) Gara

India's tryst with COVID-19 Pandemic began with a Nationwide lockdown on March 25, 2020. The shock and awe specialist Prime Minister Narendra Modi approached the issue with the same theatrics that he displayed during demonetization. Events that unfolded ever since have shown the utter disregard and rather disdain for the poor that political leaders across India possess. It is almost as if these individuals are non-existent in the mainstream discourse.

Even as the horrific scenes of stranded daily wage laborers trying to exit Delhi in the immediate aftermath of this draconian lockdown remain freshly etched in our collective memory, equally horrendous images have emerged from Mumbai. The sudden, blanket shutdown of public transport is unthinkable in any country worthy of being called a democracy. The level of insensitivity on display smacks of sheer arrogance and dictatorial attitudes of the rulers. While the Prime Minister should bear moral responsibility, most Chief Ministers have also proven to be products of the same cloth with an utter lack of remorse.

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Dr. Narayan Bhosale

People from nomadic communities did not understand the precise meaning of this lockdown during the period of pandemic. If they did, it was already late; if it wasn't too late, then they were frustrated due to the helpless state it put them in. Nomadic communities have been stranded on the streets in various states, near petrol pumps, playgrounds, and public spaces after the announcement and implementation of the ongoing lockdown.

In India, the number of labourers and families migrating in the search of work is alarmingly high. The Economic Survey report shows that around nine million workers migrate from one state to another and five million workers migrate within the state every year. Population of people belonging to nomadic tribes in Maharashtra is 1 crore. Of this 1 crore, half migrate for work. Similarly, according to government reports, half of the total 15 crore Nomadic people in India migrate for work. These migrants have been travelling in order to cater to their most basic necessities--of food, clothing, shelter, and gainful employment. Some of these people from Nomadic tribes are seen to be employed in temporary situations, offering various services in the higher classes' settlements. Nomadic tribes' settlements are reduced to being labor providing hubs for the urban populations.

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Dr. Sandip Medhe

Introduction

The gross disparities in health that are conspicuous at the interface of different social orders in India are not new, but had been neglected in the discourse on Indian public health. These disparities in provision of health services driven by social forces result in unequal health outcomes among different social groups within the society(Adams et al., 2018), particularly with regards to the vulnerable, marginalized and socially excluded castes and tribes in the Indian society. According to the Commission on Social Determinants of Health brought together by the World Health Organization, factors such as social exclusion, food, transport, and stress are accepted as important social determinants of health (Marmot, 2017). Thus, unequal distribution of privileges and resources between different social classes results in differential opportunities to access health services.

National Family Health Survey (NFHS) is a national five-yearly survey conducted in India, and is analogous to the Demographic Health Survey (DHS) done in other middle/low income countries. Analysis of disaggregated data procured from the NFHS has established that caste in India has been persistently acting as a pivotal determinant of inequalities in health outcomes, especially for the Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) (Krishnan, 2000). Social exclusion, marginalization and discriminatory practices such as untouchability have become significant barriers to ensuring equitable access to essential health services such as primary healthcare, food security programs, maternal and reproductive health services, access to immunization. Such inequalities in health outcomes are the result of apathetic socio-political arrangements leading to avoidable but embodied inequalities in society (Krieger, 2012).

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Birendra Nag

I could remember the early days of my engagement with Ambedkarite activism; I used to hear this quotation “Educate, Agitate and Organize” on Bhim Jayanti that my community in the Balangir district of the Odisha state used to celebrate every year on 14th April. At that time, I didn't even know the source  of this quotation: who might have said this, what it means so on and so forth. Further, when I ventured into different spaces of Ambedkarite engagement, both within the state and outside, most notably in Maharashtra, I came to understand different intricacies of the movement, people, and its deployment of language in understanding and fighting caste. One of the many intricacies was the concept of Educate, Agitate and Organize.

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Subodh Kunwer

Has the Corona virus pandemic become something other than a medical subject/disease? The handling of this pandemic brought many crises, events and spectacles to the fore. While on one side lives of people are being lost, on the other we are witnessing the theatrical, performative aspect of the pandemic. Jennifer Cooke in her book Legacies of Plague in Literature, Theory and Film, drawing from Antonin Artaud's 'The Theatre and the Plague',and Albert Camus' 'The State of Siege', focuses on the fact that the effect of plague [pandemic] has an inherent theatricality, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by many playwrights. This write up sure will be called as audacious, perverted and insolent. Let it be called so. We have the example of Antonin Artaud who viewed plague in his essay 'Theatre and the Plague' as a theatrical and, theatre as plaguelike in its spectacle and its physical effect. Albert Camus's play "The State of Siege" as a companion to his novel The Plague presents an analogy for dictatorship and fascism.

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രഘു ഇരവിപേരൂർ

(Round Table India is doing a series to put together the Bahujan perspective on the Coronavirus pandemic)

രാകേഷ് റാം എസ്: ഇന്ത്യയിൽ കോവിഡ്-19 ആദ്യ കേസ് തിരിച്ചറിഞ്ഞത് കേരളത്തിലാണ്. അതിനെതിരെ ഏറ്റവും കാര്യക്ഷമതയോടെ പ്രതികരിച്ചതും കേരളമാണ്. ആദ്യം തൊട്ടു ബോധവത്കരണമുണ്ടായിട്ടും പ്രവാസികളിൽ ചിലർ(കൂടുതലും അധികാരം കൈയ്യേറുന്നവരും അത് കൊണ്ട് തന്നെ നിയന്ത്രണങ്ങൾ ഒരിക്കലും പാലിക്കാൻ താല്പര്യമില്ലാത്തവരും) മുന്നറിയിപ്പുകൾ അവഗണിക്കുകയും ഹോം ക്വാറന്റൈന്‍ പാലിക്കാതെ സമൂഹത്തിൽ ഇറങ്ങി നടക്കുകയും അതിലൂടെ അസുഖം കൂടുതൽ പേർക്ക് പിടിപെടാൻ സാഹചര്യമുണ്ടാക്കുകയും ചെയ്തു. പക്ഷെ ആദ്യ ഘട്ടത്തിൽ തന്നെ പൊതു സമൂഹത്തിൽ കൂടുതൽ നന്നായി ഇതിനെ പറ്റി ബോധ്യമുണ്ടായി എന്ന് തോന്നുന്നു. ഇതിനെ പറ്റി താങ്കളുടെ നിരീക്ഷണങ്ങൾ എങ്ങനെയാണു?

രഘു ഇരവിപേരൂർ: ഒന്നാമത്, തലമുറകൾക്കു ശേഷമാണ് ലോകം ഇത്തരം അപ്രതീക്ഷിതവും മരണകരവുമായ സാംക്രമികരോഗാവസ്ഥയെ നേരിടുന്നത്. പ്രതിരോധത്തിനായി വാക്സിൻ പോലും കണ്ടു പിടിക്കാൻ കഴിയാത്ത ഒരു രോഗത്തിന്റെ മുന്നിൽ മരണത്തെ നിസ്സഹായതയോടെ നോക്കി നിൽക്കുന്ന ഒരു അപൂർവ്വ സന്ദർഭത്തെ ആണല്ലോ ലോകം നേരിടുന്നത്. ചൈനയിലും യൂറോപ്പിലും അടക്കം ലോകത്തെ പല രാജ്യങ്ങളിലും കൊറോണ വൈറസ് ഡിസീസ് (കോവിഡ്-19) പ്രത്യക്ഷപ്പെടുകയും വലിയ തോതിൽ മരണങ്ങൾ ഉണ്ടാവുകയും ചെയ്ത ആദ്യ ഘട്ടത്തിൽ ഇന്ത്യയിൽ ഈ രോഗം കടന്നു വന്നിട്ടുണ്ടായിരുന്നില്ല. ഇവിടെ സൂചിപ്പിച്ചപോലെ കേരളത്തിലാണ്, ഇന്ത്യയിൽ ആദ്യമായി കോവിഡ് പ്രത്യക്ഷപ്പെട്ടത്. വിദേശത്തു നിന്ന് എത്തിയ മലയാളികളിലാണ് അത് ആദ്യം കാണപ്പെടുന്നത്. അവരുമായി സമ്പർക്കത്തിൽ വന്നവരിലൂടെയാണ് സംസ്ഥാനത്തു പിന്നീടത് വ്യാപിച്ചത്.

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Vidyasagar

Introduction 

The entire human civilization is passing through the most painful and catastrophic tragedy of the 21st century. The pandemic ‘COVID-19’ has spread across the world and millions of human beings are suffering for their survival. This global health crisis has compelled us to think about the future of human civilization. Competitive capitalism and blind exploitation of nature have brought the world to the brink of danger. Globalization and modernization are rapidly capturing human emotions under their control. The hegemonic capitalist ideology is solely responsible for this crisis. In such a civilizational crisis, B.R. Ambedkar’s idea of humanity becomes highly relevant for the world.

In the academic discourses, Ambedkar has rarely been seen in the framework of the environment, as much as Gandhi and Nehru have drawn the attention of scholars. In a broader sense, this article explains why Ambedkar has not found a place in the contemporary canon of Indian environmentalists and nature writers. Though, Ambedkar has immensely contributed to the domain of environment and nature through his scholarly writings. Mukul Sharma argues that ‘Ambedkar’s engagement with the environment question has been relatively unexplored, even when his thoughts and interventions on nature, village, land, agriculture, water, community, industry, technology and science are some of the enduring issues of India’s environmental and political traditions.’

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Pradnya Mangala 

(SAVARI and Round Table India are doing a series to put together the Bahujan perspective on the Coronavirus pandemic)

 Anu Ramdas: What is the global conversation about the climate/weather change as a result of the lockdown in most of the heavily industrialized countries?

Pradnya Mangala: Broadly there are two kinds of narratives around climate change/environment related to the coronavirus outbreak: Marxist and Western liberal perspectives.

1. From a Marxist environmental sociology perspective, economy and ecology are entangled in complex ways in capitalist social relations. Thus, the origin and spread of the virus is connected to the larger question of the political economy of the intensive agribusiness which has led to intrusion and exploitation of natural systems and wilderness in a manner in which the emergence of harmful pathogens has become a recurring phenomenon (Wallace, 2020; Foster, 2020). In other words, we can say that capitalism, through the rearing of animals on a large scale for profitmaking, has altered ecological conditions in ways that have contributed to the development of new forms of pathogenic diseases. This perspective helps us to situate the pandemic on a broader systemic level.

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Amarnath Sandipamu & Deepu Myneni 

(Round Table India is doing a series to put together the Bahujan perspective on the Coronavirus pandemic)

Anu Ramdas: It is well known that pandemics can and do facilitate totalitarian regimes to accelerate their ideologies when society is under the threat of the disease. We wanted to document the conversation that Amar initiated on Facebook regarding the timing of retelecasting the Ramayan serial during the Covid19 lockdown. Amar, Deepu and Kuffir give a layered reading of the myths and their mass dissemination. Enjoy!

Amarnath Sandipamu: The Govt's proposal or idea to retelecast Ramayan serial is not a smart or even an intelligent one.

Kuffir: … Darwin says that it is not the most powerful or the most intelligent species which survive, but those which adapt. So, brahmins are like that.

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Srutheesh Kannadi

The issue of caste faced by Dalits is too complex to explain in the context of post-colonial modernity. The structural existence of caste has attained much flexibility and transformed into the behaviour of an amoeba where it appears to not follow any pre-defined principles. This illusion of caste made it invisible but at the same time it informs all kind of inhuman and discriminatory practices. The post-colonial modernity has paved the way for the ruling castes/class to maintain their hierarchies and Hindu social order by covering up themselves with the liberal/progressive masks. By creating an illusion of flexibility over caste discourses the structural position still appears to be more rigid as defined in the Hindu social order. So it is in this context that the idea of conversion needs to be revisited as a tool against the caste inequalities.

Many anti-caste philosophers and intellectuals, including Ambedkar, have suggested conversion as a method to resolve the humiliations and atrocities of the caste structured Hindu society. Ambedkar talks about both the social and spiritual aspects of conversion, especially to Buddhism, by imagining the idea of liberty, equality and fraternity. He argues in favour of conversion from Hinduism since it negates the identity of an individual and recognizes only the privileges of caste/class groups. But to talk about conversion or to get converted, the primordial state demands the Dalits to be accepted as Hindu in the beginning. So how have the Dalits become Hindu is the primary question that needs to be addressed.

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Vaishali Khandekar

"In spite of what others say the Hindu will not admit that there is anything evil in the Caste System and from one point he is right. There is love, unity and mutual aid among members of a family. There is honour among theives. A band of robbers have common interests as respects to its members. Gangs are marked by fraternal feelings and intense loyalty to their own ends however opposed they may be to the other gangs. Following this up one can say that a Caste has got all the praiseworthy characteristics which a society is supposed to have. It has got the virtues of a family inasmuch as there is love, unity and mutual aid. It has got the honour known to prevail among thieves. It has got loyalty and fraternal feeling we meet within gangs and it also possesses that sense of common interests which is found among robbers." ~ Babasaheb Ambedkar in "Triumph of Brahminism"

Yesterday, India witnessed a Diwali ahead of Diwali. What was different about this Diwali was that instead of celebrating just Ram's homecoming, it celebrated the supreme leader PM Narendra Modi. It was rather a celebration of Hindu Religion, marking its presence and a decalaration of victory through this Hindu orchestra, directed by their king. While I was witnessing this mayhem, I was enraged by the diyas and the sound of conches being blown. People went to the extent of chanting Jai Shri Ram and Bharat Mata ki Jai.

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