Tag: Madhya Pradesh
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More Hindu Right Groups, Polarising With Impunity: How Communal Tensions Intensified in Khargone
On April 10, violence engulfed the small town of Khargone. While the town was celebrating Ram Navami, a rumour spread that the police had stopped a religious procession near the local Jama Masjid. In response, a second procession moved down the same path. More militant, it aired provocative songs and slogans, and even pulled along […]
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Under BJP-RSS Rule, Madhya Pradesh’s Culture Department Stares at Moral, Artistic Decay
In April 2021, readers of local daily Swadesh found an astounding report in their newspaper. Headined ‘Ustad Alauddin Khan Sangeet Evam Kala Academy ka Kaarnama (‘A Great Feat by the Ustad Alauddin Khan Music and Art Academy’)’, the newspaper reported that the Academy – set up by the Madhya Pradesh government in 1979 – had […]
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The CBI must understand trains and bogies if it aims to crack the Vyapam scam
out today, this story which looks at how exam rigging was done in madhya pradesh’s #vyapam scam. As the number of gangs grew, the market evolved further. First, students began shopping for lowest prices between gangs. This gave rise to a set of disputes which, by 2009, had resulted in the gangs dividing up Madhya […]
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Vyapam’s hidden costs: Broken dreams and a health system staffed by dodgy doctors
In 2009, Poonam Sharma finished school and turned her thoughts to medical school. The daughter of a junior police officer, Sharma left home in Shivpuri, in the northern reaches of Madhya Pradesh, for Gwalior, home to coaching centres that promise to help candidates crack all kinds of entrance exams. She enrolled for a year-long coaching […]
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when claims of indian exceptionalism run into bhopal gas survivors
in a month, it will be 27 years since the gas leaked out of that tank in union carbide’s bhopal plant. it is an event which has never quite lost its ability to shock people — the scale of the disaster; the state’s brutal abandonment of the gas affected; the subsequent discovery that households living […]
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Union Carbide. Reflections
this is the first of three opinionated stories i wrote for et’s 50th anniversary. i cannot find the links to these on the website, and so am pasting the raw text itself. Blackened and twisted from the heat of the reaction, tank 610 lies on its side. Twenty-six years ago, on the night of 2nd-3rd […]
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Union Carbide Followup. Three
In June this year, responding to the public outcry over the weak judgments handed out by a Bhopal sessions court, the Indian government unveiled a new relief package for the survivors of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. With the 26th anniversary of the leak around the corner, the Economic Times travelled to Bhopal to take stock of […]
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A tragedy that looks like it will never end
eleven days earlier, a Bhopal sessions court had handed down measly sentences to seven people accused in the bhopal gas leak. in the resulting cries for revenge and demands for the extradition of warren andersen, a big point was ignored. the tragedy at bhopal did not just occur 25 years ago, it continues to unfold. Widespread […]
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tihi
(am writing this post in 2014 but retrospectively dating it back to dec 28, 2009. this, as things stand, is the very first set of stories i wrote for the economic times — they appeared three days before i joined the paper. the paper was bringing out an year end issue, and i wrote about […]
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More observations from Tihi et al
a small update from me. when the previous post was written, i was in the middle of the itc project — living in two villages, studying the impact this agribusiness was having on village india. that project is over now. i am back in starvation gully looking for a job. needless to say, the village […]
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a development chronology of tihi
since the 12th of january, i have been living in tihi, a village of 300-odd households in the central indian state of madhya pradesh (more specifically, in malwa). six years ago, itc-ibd, an indian agribusiness, set up an ict kiosk in the house of one of the larger farmers in this village, began using that […]
Fractured/Earth 