“What I knew in the abstract I was now living, feeling and observing”: An interview with Sudha Bharadwaj (on her book" From Phasi Yard"  Freny Manecksha ·December 17, 2023

She spoke of how as a young student she was influenced by Shankar Guha Niyogi and his vision for a working-class movement that went far beyond lobbying for their rights. Taking up the invitation of ‘Comrade’ Niyogi, she left her middle-class surroundings to visit Dalli Rajhara, a mining township that supplied the Bhilai Steel Plant with iron ore.

“As a lawyer, I visited jails in Odisha and Chhattisgarh and saw terrible conditions. At Malkangiri Jail (bordering Chhattisgarh and part of the Maoist belt) toilets did not have roofs. “Sentries atop the walls could look into areas where women bathe. Sanitary conditions were bad. In contrast, Yerawada and Byculla have better physical conditions. But when you actually stay in prison, it begins seeping in a very real sense … that unfreedom and what that means. “What I knew in the abstract, I was now living. Feeling it, watching it and what it does to people and how they cope with it. It was a revelation. And it was the sorting out of those thoughts that led to this book.

Prison reforms speak of equality before the law. There are declarations that all prisoners must be entitled to basic human rights, human dignity and human sympathy. But, as Bharadwaj’s book reveals with non-judgmental empathy and a keen perspective of human rights, jails are designed to strip one of all that.

Garg's book revels Reason Behind Urjit Patel's Resign https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqxsMXFqNSs RBI in 2018 changed the rules regarding loan write-off i.e. NPA. Then Patel gave a speech in March that the government had not given up control on public sector banks. Due to this, there is a problem in regulation. By August, the dispute reached the first place. The central government had increased the support price of crops for farmers a year before the elections. After this, the Reserve Bank increased the interest rate saying that inflation may increase. Governments generally do not like to increase interest rates because it reduces growth. People's life is difficult. No government would want to take such a risk just before the elections. Whereas according to RBI it was necessary to increase the interest rate at that time to control inflation,

Derek O’Brien’s Old Speech Goes Viral Amidst His Suspension From Rajya Sabha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sebv_iD_UqA  |
Trinamool Congress Member of Parliament Derek O'Brien has been suspended from the Rajya Sabha for the remainder of the current session due to "disorderly conduct," as Parliament reconvened amidst heightened tension following a significant security breach in the Lok Sabha the previous afternoon. O'Brien had called for a debate on the incident, during which two individuals leaped from the visitors' gallery into the Lok Sabha and released yellow smoke canisters. The Rajya Sabha Chair, Jagdeep Dhankhar, expressed strong disapproval, identified the politician from Bengal, and ordered his immediate exit from the House.

Why new criminal bills are worse than colonial ones https://pucl.org/manage-writings/why-new-criminal-bills-are-worse-than-colonial-ones/   Mihir Desai, Vijay Hiremath Oct 01, 2023

Three new major offences have been added to the IPC. These are terrorism, organised crime and petty organised crime, and mob lynching. The sections dealing with terrorist acts and organised crime are so widely defined that any dissenter can be brought within its sweep, and the definition of terrorist act is even wider than under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) as it includes even disturbance to public. ..A terrorist organisation is not confined to those listed in the schedule to the UAPA and thus an ordinary trade union or civil society organisation can be branded as such.

Mob lynching has been defined as an offence if five or more people commit a murder, but the punishment ranges from seven years to life imprisonment and death sentence. However, the punishment for ordinary murder is either life imprisonment or death sentence. Thus mob lynching is treated as a softer offence..

The courts are given discretion to conduct all proceedings, including the trial, in electronic mode. This will imply that an undertrial accused will not be brought to court while the lawyer may be in court or conducting the trial from a completely different place.

This can cause three problems. First, the accused may not be able to give adequate and prompt instructions to the lawyer. Second, client confidentiality gets compromised. Third, most of the time, the accused who are undertrials look forward to being brought to the court because that is one way in which they can easily spend some time with their lawyers, relatives and friends. While video conferencing may be the future, especially in the case of undertrials it should be resorted to only if the accused agrees.

The existing laws do require substantial rehauling keeping in mind the rights of the accused as well as the rights of victims. More particularly command responsibility for offences by public servants and corporate homicide for acts of corporations which lead to deaths needed to be added.

74.1% of Indians unable to afford a healthy diet: FAO Report https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/741-of-indians-unable-to-afford-a-healthy-diet-fao-report/article67631605.ece December 12, 2023.  31.7% of children of the country under five years of age suffered with stunted growth. “Stunted growth and development are the result of poor maternal health and nutrition, inadequate infant and young child feeding practices, and repeated infections interacting with a variety of other factors over a sustained period,” the report said.

The Centre had rubbished those data by claiming that the methodology was wrong.

UN की इस रिपोर्ट ने बता दी देश के विकास की हकीकत ! | UN Repoert On Food https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f10OS-u9qkM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8vQU2MMWmU

सीनियर जज ने रात में बुलाया, CJI को लिखी चिट्ठी से हड़कंप । Article19 India  Dec 15, 2023
महिला जज ने लिखा मेरी ज़िंदगी, मेरा आत्मसम्मान और मेरी आत्मा खत्म हो चुकी है। “कामकाजी महिलाएं शारीरिक शोषण के साथ पर जीना सीख लें। मैं लोगों को कैसे न्याय दे पाऊँगी जबकि मैं ख़ुद निराश हो चुकी हूँ

Congress MP Dhiraj Sahoo के घर cash मिलने का Sanjay Jha ने बताया पूरा सच! Dhiraj Sahoo cash video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9dtmB3zNWM 

237K views 5 days ago #dhirajsahu #publicmeter #rahulgandhi
BJP leaders are trolling Rahul Gandhi because more than Rs 250 crore in cash was recovered from the house of Congress MP Dheeraj Sahu. Praveen Gautam's analysis on how political analyst Sanjay Jha showed the bigger picture of politics when so much black money was found in the house of a Congress MP.

Mahua Moitra speech on Adani: He is the remote control behind the PM  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_UICBipWx4
Feb 8, 2023 Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra made a piercing speech at the Lok Sabha on 7th February, saying that we have all been fooled and ‘topi pehenaaoed’ by a certain industrialist whose name starts with A and ends with I, but is not Advani. Responding to the President’s address naming corruption and institutional favouritism as the biggest banes of the country, Mahua called the union government out saying that the pride of India does not lie in the wealth of one individual, but in the robustness of its institutional structures.

https://thewire.in/law/the-last-pillar-of-indian-democracy-has-fallen 

the Supreme Court has opened the way for his or any future government to amend the Constitution without having to bother with getting a two-thirds majority in both houses of Parliament.

To justify its decision, the bench has put forward two other supporting arguments. The first is that Article 370 was placed in part 21 of the Constitution titled “Temporary, Transitional and Special Provisions”. Thus it was never meant to be permanent. So all that the Modi government has done is to close the chapter on Kashmir.

The second is that over the decades since the accession, Kashmir’s laws have in any case been brought in line progressively with those of the rest of India. So as the government has argued, the autonomy shielded by Article 370 had been been ‘gradually eroded’.

What the Supreme Court has chosen to ignore is that all this was done with the consent of the Kashmir governments of the time. Sheikh Abdullah had signed the Delhi agreement only after convening a constituent Assembly with 75 members, to approve of it. In the decades that followed, more and more all-India laws and provisions were extended to Kashmir as well with the full consent, often at the request of, the Kashmir government. As Sheikh Abdullah’s talks with Indira Gandhi’s special representative, G. Parthasarathy, before returning to power showed, there was next to nothing left that he wanted to change.

This process was a world away from the sleight of hand that the Modi government used in 2019, to ‘complete’ the integration. The contrast between ‘erosion by consent’ and ‘erosion through brute force’ was vividly demonstrated by the weeks-long curfews, the complete shut down of internet services, and the paralysis of transport even afterwards that forced people catching flights out of Kashmir to walk kilometres to get to the airport. For the Supreme Court to have glossed over this stark and humiliating difference is inexcusable.