Category: Popular Essays

Popular Essays

Is One Pandemic not Enough?

By AMITA KANEKAR

What can you expect from a government that responds to a disaster by creating new disasters? Hard on the heels of the news that Covid19 had reached India, came the announcement of an unplanned but instant national lockdown, sending the well-to-do into a panic grabbing of all available provisions, and pushing millions of daily wage earners into horrific misery and desperation which the government, almost unbelievably, has done little to ameliorate even three weeks later. And then – to distract from its own mammoth failing – came the demonisation of the Tablighi programme, resulting in violent harassment, social boycotts and more deaths, this time targetting poor Muslims, on top of the general turmoil. (more…)

Popular Essays

The Importance of Public Systems

By DALE LUIS MENEZES

Widening roads and promoting the auto industry will not solve traffic hassles; but investing in reliable public transport will. Private schools won’t deliver a good education to all except if the public schools get a boost in infrastructure and better teaching methods. Clanging pots and pans won’t make a deadly pandemic go away; but having an efficient public healthcare system will, or at least mitigate dire circumstances. (more…)

Popular Essays

COVID-19 meets a Casteist Health Care System

By AMITA KANEKAR

Where are the face-masks, gloves, and hand-sanitisers – forget boots and body-suits – for city cleaners and garbage collectors, those who in the current Covid-19 ‘lockdown’ are still working, to keep Goa free of dust and dirt? Where is the water and soap to wash up after work? Nowhere to be seen, and not a word mentioned either by our loquacious Chief Minister or Health Minister, both pontificating about how the state government is committed to protecting people’s lives. But which people? Everybody, or just some? (more…)

Popular Essays

Addressing COVID-19 in a Sick System

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

On reading so many different takes on COVID-19, I am confused. I don’t belong to the world of medicine. We live in an age where there are genuinely serious health concerns globally on the one hand, and selective unscientific hyping up about certain virii or diseases on the other hand. And both of these happen at international levels as well as at the hands of the nation state. I was reading an article titled False Alarms and Pseudo-Epidemics: The Limitations of Observational Epidemiology” by David Grimes and Kenneth Schulz, for instance, which pointed out that “all observational research has bias (which can include selection, information, and confounding bias)”. (more…)

Popular Essays

Sedition, Development, and Citizenship

By DALE LUIS MENEZES

Can some progressive laws deliver justice when a country’s statutes books have various other discriminatory and problematic laws? The widespread protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) (and rioting in response to these protests) highlight the various unresolved issues dogging the Union of India. Because ‘citizenship’ is the broad, catch-all, and all-encompassing legal concept at the heart of the Indian Republic, the various ways in which it remains unrealized for millions needs to be considered. As the legislations around citizenship are the issue these days, it is vital to think of the various other laws that might subvert the realization of citizenship. Two important legislations are those that pertain to seditious speech and land acquisition laws that promote development, often at the expense of socially and economically marginalized communities. (more…)

Popular Essays

CAA-NRC-NPR and the Denial of Land Rights

By AMITA KANEKAR

India annexed Goa in 1961. The argument of the Nehru government of the time was that Goa was an integral part of India that had been colonised by Portugal and thus needed to be liberated. But now, with the enumeration for the National Population Register (NPR) already started, to be followed by the National Register of Citizens (NRC), or, in other words, with Goans now having to prove that they are Indian citizens, isn’t the government questioning its own declaration, that Goa is an integral part of India? Or – as is becoming clearer every day – is it only the land that’s integral? While the people are another matter, or rather, people don’t matter. The land of Goa is deemed unquestionably Indian – even worshipped as Bharatmata – but the people of Goa are not. They may be deemed foreigners, and might even get kicked off the ‘Indian’ land they have lived on for generations… (more…)

Popular Essays

Lessons that Students Learn: MoI in Times of CAA

By DALE LUIS MENEZES

It is four years since the tragic death of Hyderabad Central University scholar Rohith Vemula. Driven to commit suicide by a deeply casteist and discriminatory educational system, Vemula now is a symbol of liberation for all students who hail from minoritized- and discriminated-against backgrounds. In the context of the recent country-wide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, Vemula’s memory fortifies protestors to soldier on. (more…)

Popular Essays

The Usefulness of Tiger Deaths

By AMITA KANEKAR

Vishwajeet Rane, minister in the Goa cabinet and MLA of Sattari, says that he was in a state of shock at the news of tiger deaths in his constituency. The chief minister Pramod Sawant has also expressed deep pain, sadness, concern, and everything else possible, while promising a high-level investigation to find out the reasons for the tragedy. Could these worthies be so shaken and stirred because they’ve suddenly realised that it’s their own rotten development policies that are responsible for the tiger deaths? Of course not. But if you think that the expressions of official shock and outrage are all just drama for the cameras, you would be mistaken as well. No, this outrage is intended to achieve more than a picture in the press, for tiger deaths – provided they result in enough public anger – offer a very convenient way of land-grab. (more…)

Popular Essays

Indian Citizenship and Goan Belonging

By DALE LUIS MENEZES

The passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) has exposed the Indian state’s trust deficit with its people. As it stands today, one needs to prove that at least one parent is a legal citizen. Being born in your country is no longer enough to belong in India! For Goans, this amendment may be in direct contradiction to the Goa, Daman, and Diu (Citizenship) Order, 1962, which granted them Indian citizenship. (more…)

Popular Essays

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019: A Dangerous Law

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA), got onto India’s statute book on 12th December, 2019, after it was passed in the Lok Sabha on 10th December, 2019, in the Rajya Sabha on 11th December, 2019,   and got the assent of the President on 12th December, 2019,   and was promptly notified in the Government Gazette on the same day. This Act comes at a moment when there is widespread discontent on account of an economic slowdown. It comes at a time after the National Register of Citizens in Assam, a Supreme Court directed exercise, has resulted in 19 lakh people, most of them Hindu, being excluded from the register. (more…)