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India’s initiative to study the global benchmarks for water trading indicates that the NITI Aayog, as a national body of planning, has decided to continue with its neoliberalist stand and strengthen it further. 

If this comes into effect, though it is a national resource, water will be sold like gold and silver. As NITI Aayog Looks into Water Trading, it Should Know the High Costs it May Bring (thewire.in) 

Since the idea is directly concerned with property rights, the foremost challenge is how the legitimisation of monopolisation and exploitation of water and water resources will be justified in prevailing constitutional settings. How will the principles of equality and rights over water as a property be defined for water markets? Once water becomes a commodity for trade, a disturbing question will be what can be a ‘comfortable’ price of water for the poor and middle classes.

For a country like India, this idea also presents a challenge to equity. Instead of fighting for water for all, it encourages more water to the price payers. 

As the purpose of trade is to increase private surplus value, the worry is how the government will control the exploitation of groundwater. The NITI Aayog cannot afford to avoid the fact that big farmers and industrialists can collect excess amounts of water by investing in water trading. To ensure more water, they can establish water plants in plain lands and extract groundwater excessively by using advanced technology, as Nestlé is currently doing.

by Deepti Acharya

17/02/2023

Responding to a question by Communist Party of India MP K. Subbarayan in Lok Sabha on February 13, 2023, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan said that the Indian Council of Historical Research, a body under the Union education ministry, has not taken up any project to rewrite history and it is only working on filling the “gaps” in history.

How the ICHR Is 'Inventing History' Under the Modi Government (thewire.in)

In response, Congress MP Manish Tiwari pointed out in a supplementary question that Pradhan’s claim was in contradiction to the statements made by the council which is continuously and publicly boasting of ‘rewriting history’.

Professor Harbans Mukhia is an Indian historian who taught for a long time at the Jawaharlal Nehru University until his retirement in 2004. His work focuses on medieval India and he has written several books on Indian history and the medieval period.

When asked about the exhibition and the statement of the member secretary of the ICHR, Mukhia said, “They are taking us back to where James Mills left us in 1818…”

“Historiography has always been changing, but what is happening now is completely different. In the years succeeding 1947, history penned before independence was ‘decolonised’. Now, it is being ‘recolonised’ but they have no axis. To be honest, even graduation students do not talk of rulers as being Hindus or Muslims,” Mukhia said.

by Meenakshi Tewari

18/02/2023

Girish Kuber writes: Election Commission’s endorsement of Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena may hurt the BJP more than it helps https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/election-commission-eknath-shinde-shiv-sena-thackeray-symbol-row-8454944 Eknath Shinde and his faction may well end up as an albatross around BJP's neck: EC's decision could unite Opposition further, increase rifts within the ruling faction