Read the letter written by four senior most judges to CJI Misra
Category: Campaigns
Can the Government guarantee safety of data ?
Is Aadhaar fool proof ?
Is Aadhaar making identity theft easier ?
Is Government putting citizen’s data at risk ?
Why is Government in a hurry to mandate Aadhaar ?
Is Government unable/can’t control Aadhaar leaks ?
Ha kaba kut, na ka bynta ka lawei bad ka jingbha jingbit-jingbiang bad jingshngain ki nongshong shnong jong ka Jylla, ngi donkam kyrkieh ia ka jingiamir jingmut lang khnang ban lah ban sei madan da ka kynhun ba thymmai kaba ieng ha ka sain pyrkhat kaba thymmai (Ideology), ka sain pyrkhat kaba niewkor ia ka jinglong mar ryngkat (Equality) ia ka Hok (Justice) ia ka Jinglaitluid (Freedom) bad ia ka roi ka par kaba pynmyntoi ia baroh bad kaba neh pateng la pateng. Ha shuwa ba ngin ryngkoh sha ka kper tyrso jong ka meinah thymmai to ngin puson bad shim da kawei pat ka lad ban pynkha ia ka seng ne kynhun bad ka ban mih napoh ka Jylla hi, ka seng ka ban ieng bad iakhun na ka bynta hok ban im bad ka ban iada ia ka khyndew ka shyiap bad ia ka hok longbriew man briew. Thma U Rangli Juki (TUR) ka khyllie pyrda ia ki jingshisha bad jingarsap
Ki Jingduna ka Fifth Pay Commission bad Ka Jingbym lah ban iada ia ki hok jong ki nongtrei-nongbylla
Ka Fifth Pay Commission wat la ka pynkmen ia kiba bun ki nongtrei sorkar kiba mynta, pynban haba pule bniah ia ka la shem ruh ia ki jingduna bad khamtam eh ka jingbymdon ki lad kiba biang ban iada ia ka hok jong ki nongtrei bad nangne shakhmat ka lawei jong ki nongtrei, khamtam kito kiba trei bad ki ban sa trei ha ki kyrdan ba kham hapoh kum ha ki grade 3 bad grade 4, kam long kaba shngain.
Katba ka fifth pay commission ka kyntiew ia ka tulop ki nongtrei sorkar kiba neh(Regular), hynrei kumno pat shaphang kiwei ki nongtrei kiba trei kum ki nongbylla sngi, ki nongtrei iing, ki nongtrei kynta bad wat kito kiba trei kam ha ki ophis sorkar ruh kum ki adhoc ne kiba shu trei shipor (Contract basis)? Ka Sorkar kam la shym kren ei ei ne shim pyrkhat na ka bynta jong ki bad lada ka long kumne ka jingkyntiew tulop ia ki nongtrei sorkar ba neh kan nang pyniar shuh shuh ia ka lhuh kaba ladon lypa ha ka ioh ka kot bad ka imlang sahlang bad kan nang pynskhem ia ka jinglah shilliang.
Without corresponding protective mechanisms for the workers of the unorganised sector, the Meghalaya Fifth Pay Commission is a recipe for further widening socio economic inequalities in Meghalaya. Unnoticed by many, Meghalaya Government’s ‘gift’ to 68,280 regular Govt Servants also includes plans for further contractualisation and informalisation of work in the state Government sector.
“Ka Shillong, Ka Meghalaya – Jong Baroh / SHILLONG & MEGHALAYA BELONG TO ALL”
These words that appeared on placards by Shillong’s vendors at rally in June 2016. It carried a political message that is at the heart of demands for rights to livelihood and right to the city. In very plain terms the vendors stated that the city of Shillong, and the state of Meghalaya belongs to everyone. This message challenges dominant ideas of belonging in a city that has experienced decades of violence- both state and non-state- whose primary purpose has been to mark difference.
After receiving the recent accolade of “Festival capital of Europe” – Meghalaya gets its first participatory festival of BAD ROADS.
NEHU needs a change, it needs a change in the mindset on how to tackle problems and figure out solutions. We cannot just leave NEHU believing it will get better because it won’t. Sexual harassment cases are piling up, and students are too afraid to even put forth a complaint because when they do, the teachers are at times reinstated, which does not make sense and speaks of complete injustice.
This interview by Amrapali Basumatary & Bonojit Hussain was taken in 2016 December, just two days after Akhil Gogoi was released from his 78 days of imprisonment by The Assam Government. For various reasons the interview couldn’t be published during that time. However, with the recent re-imprisonment of Akhil Gogoi under the National Security Act (NSA) in September 2017, we feel that it is important to bring this interview to public domain.
Recently, a furious debate about ‘sexual harassment’ was initiated on social media, after a Dalit woman student brought out a list on Facebook accusing many powerful Indian male academics, many of them Brahmin, for being sexual harassers. Soon, certain upper caste feminists came forward with a statement that opposed the list, asking the anonymous complainants to pull it down and follow the ‘due process’ in dealing with sexual harassment. There was a huge uproar against this statement and younger women reproached the older feminists for espousing a Savarna feminism that sought to protect (Brahmin) men. Things have tempered down now after the appearance of a second list (this time posted from an anonymous Facebook account) in which many Bahujan scholars and student leaders of Bahujan movements were named as sexual harassers. This list too, it was claimed, was created by Dalit Bahujan women.
Kane ka dei ka jingthoh jong ka Reetika Khera kaba kyrteng “Why ABBA must go”, kaba la pynwan sha ka ktien khasi da u Rev. Kyrsoibor Pyrtuh hadien ba la ioh jingbit. Ka Reetika Khera ka hikai Economics ha IIT Delhi
As the youngest member of my department, I am frustrated. I am frustrated for many reasons, official and non-official alike, one being this – I feel I am the biggest hypocrite in the world- I teach my students the significance of women’s rights, activism and women’s jurisdiction but in reality, I don’t even have that iota of power to stretch out my hands to them, hug them, and tell them that-We will be taking some concrete steps!
The conversation with Vinita Chandra of Ramjas College, Delhi was conducted by Rochelle Pinto to address the fact that the process of filing a complaint against sexual harassment in a university and the details of the law were not widely known, adding uncertainty to what is likely to be a difficult decision. Ramjas College had sustained a working unity among a group of teachers that enabled the functioning of a committee to deal with sexual harassment. The following is an account of what an institution can become if about four or five people withstand the pressures on organizations that protects the rights of its members. Ramjas is not the only college to have a committee that enjoys credibility, but it belongs to a small minority of institutions that have sustained the process. The majority of educational institutions in the country have a different story.
Internet activists and the government form a strange alliance to destroy long-standing feminist attempts at creating conditions for justice in cases of sexual harassment in educational institutions,” says Ashley Tellis
The list by Raya Sarkar raises questions that were, deliberately or otherwise, ignored and silenced increasingly over the years. The problems of male entitlement and casteist bias stand exposed in the names of the people in the list. We can’t therefore afford to dismiss the urgent resolving of these problems within our revolutionary politics and its practice. Our Parties and Organizations are filled to the brim with such people who wouldn’t baulk an inch if they had the chance to sexually harass or rape a woman. Our sole obsession with class struggle has made us blatantly ignorant of the gender question. These are legitimate critiques which this list has raised and which we need to address.
Magsaysay award winner T M Krishna and ‘Kodaikanal Won’t’ fame rapper Sofia Ashraf joined hands with writer Perumal Murugan and activist Shital Sathe to produce…
Lada phi dei i nongtrei-nongbylla ha jylla Meghalaya, peit ia kane ka video. kan batai shai ia ki hok jong phi ha ki kam sorkar, lane ha ki kam riewshimet (private) bad ter ter. Ngi lah ban ioh ki hok lada ngi ieng tylli lang kawei. Peit bad pynsaphriang ia kane sha baroh ki nongbylla ba shah pynduh ia ki hok jong ki.
Yes, procedures and institutions have often failed us, but a feminist politics demands that we continue the struggle to make these processes more robust. Let me reiterate that I believe that testimonies are certainly a strong feminist strategy, but not the simple naming of people with no context or explanation. There is no easy fix. The building of feminist cultures requires taking responsibility for lengthy struggles, building of solidarities, rethinking of strategies from time to time, engaging in dialogue with mutual trust.
I am not very hopeful that the trust that has been so wantonly destroyed can be rebuilt very easily.
My only hope is that the list does not remain a list, but goes on further to secure some form of justice. It would be great to see older feminist activists, the ones we look up to, come forward and offer assistance to the victims and assure them of support. So that they can shed their anonymity and take on their perpetrators. It would be the logical conclusion to see those who keep talking of institutional redressal, actually offer some redressal to the victims by assuring that their institutions will seriously probe all complains. Unless, these are assured, this will remain another FB viral sensation to be forgotten within 3 months and I sincerely hope that this does not happen.
As a student, I remember this surgeon, who took about 12 of us students, mostly male, on rounds, stripped a young woman upto her waist, without any form of consent and proceeded to ‘palpate’ her breasts the entire 15 minutes that he was ‘teaching’ us. What is my memory of that? My memory is filled with guilt – that I didn’t intervene, that I didn’t slap him, that I didn’t complain. What are women like us to do with guilt such as that? Where was ‘due process’ then and where is it now?
Each instance of alleged sexual harassment needs to be examined and dealt with on its own merit – with due process available both to the accused and to the accuser. Sweeping, anonymously driven collective assertions of the culpability of a cluster of named and shamed persons violates the principles of the need for rigourous individual examination of each instance, with due attention to the testimonies of victims and the defences of the accused, without which justice and resolution can never be served.
Over the last two days, my facebook has gone on overdrive with feminists finding themselves in polarised positions against the list of perpetrators that Raya Sarkar, a Dalit lawyer in California circulated on facebook after compiling the names of some powerful men in the academic world and alleged sexual harassers. Some feminists as mouthpieces for the entire community wrote an apology of an article in kafila urging that the list be taken down for it violates ‘due process’ of law. Other feminists have come out in full support and some have taken the middle ground, allowing themselves to articulate their confusions, while many have remained mum for the more one thinks about it the more contradictory one seems to become.
The Meeting resolved to start an Opt-Out campaign for those who had already enrolled in Aadhaar but who wish to withdraw their consent and with draw from the Central Data Storage which they believe that both their Bio-metric and Demographic Information are stored. The Opt-Out campaign is based on an informed opinion that the adhaar project is inherently flawed/dangerous and it is also based on the fact that now Privacy is a Fundamental Right as guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution of India so therefore the Adhaar Project infringes upon this Right and as citizens we resolved to protect our Right to Privacy by opting out of Adhaar. A sample Opt-Out Letter was drafted both in English and Khasi and distributed so that people can read, understand and decide. The Meghalaya Peoples Committee on Adhaar had fixed 30 October as a date to collect all those individual opt-out letters and send them to authorities concerned and the Committee firmly believed that this opt-out campaign will have long lasting impact on the fight against intrusion by the Power of the State on individual citizens. Individuals who wish to withdraw their consent are requested to come to KSU office at Jaiaw Shillong on the 30 October 2017 and submit their opt-out letters from 11am to 3pm.
On the third day of their ongoing peaceful agitation around 1200 longstanding regular casual workers of Meghalaya Energy Corporation Ltd had lunch time protest in various parts of Meghalaya, including Shillong, Umiam, Kyrdem Kulai, Jowai, Khlierihat, Tura, Phulbari, Ampati, Baghmara, Garobadha, Mendipathar, Nongstoin, Mairang & Mawkyrwat. They held placards with slogans outlining their various grievances.
Hadiya is being treated not as a LEGAL SUBJECT by India. Therefore, her case must be transferred to the International Criminal Court… Indian State has deprived Dr. Hadiya of four fundamental HUMAN rights (Not just rights). And, not even our greatest champions of human rights are protesting it.
Akhil Gogoi’s, incarcerated people’s leader of Assam, statement in front of the Chief Judicial Magistrate on 25th September in Dibrugarh
Few days ago one of the Raiot collective members received a Whatsapp message in Hindi. However, since some of the receivers of this message could not read hindi, the thrust of the threat was not instantly delivered, so it turned into a bit of a failure. But then yesterday, it came to our attention that a few other people- journalists, activists, as well as students – received the same whatsapp-forwarded death-threat; each coming from different numbers originating from different states in the country.
The high profile rally initiative to save India’s rivers taken up by well respected religious guru Sadguru and his followers is noteworthy, and the most recent case in point. It is striking that so many film stars, politicians, governments, and public personalities, are joining the call. Lakhs of children are expected to join in the program. While we welcome such an outpouring of good intentions and good will as a demonstration of the positive energy all around, unfortunately, we have seen no evidence either from the rally organisers, on their website or their messaging, that they understand or plan to address the real threats faced by our rivers and their sorry state.
Almost seven years ago, to the week, I had sent off instructions to Gauri Lankesh about who would receive her at Imphal airport and then take her up to Ukhrul. She was part of a team of women writers from different parts of India who had been invited to travel across the Northeast and write stories about their experiences
We are curious about why the government wants to block our website. A traveling arts project is not exactly threatening the status quo. Further, curiosity and engagement with processes of identity construction is necessarily an open-ended process. There is no in-advance condemnation of any particular party, politician or any social group. From concerns about language, to food habits, to religion, marriage, divorce, clothing, color of skin and other minutiae of public and private life, identity has acquired weight if you live in India.
MPCA urges upon all concerned and at various levels of authority not to breach upon the right of privacy of each and every individual while attempting to get maximum number of persons for Aadhaar enrolment during a given period of time. As we have received the Ruling on the Right to Privacy, so shall come the Ruling on Aadhaar enrolment and registration. “Force, unaided by judgement, collapses through its own weight.” (Horace, 65-8 BC: Ode)
Ka TUR ka pynrem jur ia ka jing ibein bad jingymsuidniew jong ki katto katne ki riew Kristan ia kiba long ki nongbud Jong ka Niam Khasi Niam Trai
“Thma U Rangli-Juki (TUR) condemns the intolerant residents and the dorbar of Shnong Madan iingsyiem, Mylliem who tried to prevent the cremation of (Late) Mr. Kulam Nongrum (President Sengbah ki Nongshad Nongkheiñ) in accordance with Niam Khasi faith in his village. It was only after the intervention of the District administration and an offer of space by Seng Khasi Hima Mylliem that Late Mr. Nongrum could be cremated. The fundamentalist and intolerant behaviour of the some of the Christian majority of the village ensured that the solemn funeral procession was also an occasion for hurling insults on the adherents of the indigenous faith.”
An Open Letter to Assam Chief Minister, Shri Sarbananda Sonowal on the killing of Lafiqul Islam Ahmed of All BTC Minority Students Union (ABMSU)
On the evening of 7th July 2017, Yakub Khan Nongkynrih, an alleged sexual offender, was killed by a mob at Nongkseh, Shillong. He was accused of having sexually assaulted an eleven year old girl who is the daughter of his landlord.
In an unconstitutional and discriminatory move, the Education Department of the Assam government has recently come up with a notification that bars candidates who have studied in the vernacular medium from appearing for the Special Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) for Graduate Teachers in the Adarsha Vidyalayas in Assam.
[WATCH] Trinamool Congress, led by Mamata Banerjee, came to power in West Bengal in 2011, riding a popular wave of mass fury over forcible acquisition of land and state atrocities in Singur, Nandigram, and Lalgarh. But six years down the line, the faultlines of the new regime are showing up, most notably in the ongoing farmers’ movement in Bhangar, with a sense of déjà vu.
The Umtrew River flows through mostly the Ri-Bhoi district. A number of dams vital for electricity generation lay along its path. It acts as a border along the Nongkhyllem Wildlife Sanctuary along a certain stretch. Its value towards preserving wildlife cannot be exaggerated.
Assam’s Debjani Bora, who has won gold at the national level for her javelin throws, was targeted as a witch in 2014 in the state and assaulted, of all the places, in a community prayer hall. Debjani’s case puts into question one of the biggest myths around witch-hunting, that it takes place only due to superstition, ignorance and lack of education in far-flung remote villages, and among poor, uneducated people.
So the stone-slinging begins. It is the usual show. UDP will throw shingle at INC who will throw gravel at BJP who will in turn attack UDP. It is unimaginative, reactionary and all about head-line grabbing. Here’s a little info for the political party honchos: Nobody cares. It is cynical to say so but what can you expect?
READ THE SUICIDE NOTE WHICH COULD HAVE PREVENTED THE JUDICIAL CRISIS
If one was being parochial one would have only said that Kalikho Pul’s Suicide Note is one the most important literary sources to understand politics and governance in the North East of India (relevant parochial sections highlighted in green in the english translation). But this Suicide note is also a key public document which lifted the tattered veil of judicial incorruptibility (highlighted in pink in the english translation). Today when 4 senior most judges have broken ranks to point at the rot in the judicial system under the present CJI Mr. Dipak Misra, it is important to revisit the suicide note, for here was the fuse which finally ignited the firework today.
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