Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2022 i The Caravan

THE LEDE 8 Vinayak Dewan is an editorial assistant at Oxford University Press and a former editorial intern at The Caravan. PERSPECTIVES 12 Dhirendra K Jha is a contributing writer at The Caravan. 14 Shivam Mogha is a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for the Study of Social Systems. He is a co-editor of Trolley Times, a newspaper that emerged from and documented the movement against the Modi government’s farm laws. 18 Akhilesh Pandey is a journalist based in Delhi. He has reported extensively on Uttar Pradesh. 21 Aakanksha Kaushik is an assistant professor at the University School of Management and Entrepreneurship, Delhi Technological University. REPORTAGE AND ESSAYS 24 Vidya Krishnan is a global health reporter and a Nieman Fellow. Her book Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History has been published by…

The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh’s decades-long efforts to politicise sadhus in the pursuit of its grand project appear to be coming to fruition. Until now, it was the RSS, through the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, that organised dharma sansads and lured sadhus into attendance. Now, sadhus, especially those who enjoy the backing of the RSS, are themselves doing what their mentor wants them to do—organising dharma sansads not to discuss religious issues or spread the message of the Hindu monastic class, but to promote Hindutva politics to the masses by stoking communal disharmony. The Haridwar dharma sansad demonstrated this shift. The event in Haridwar was held over three days in mid December 2021. Several sadhus gave incendiary speeches that, among other things, called for the massacre of Muslims and extolled Nathuram Godse…

In countries across the world, studies have documented the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women. The unemployment rate has been soaring and the quality of employment has worsened, for men and women both. But the position of women remains far more vulnerable in the labour market. According to the World Economic Forum’s “The Global Gender Gap Report 2021,” on account of the pandemic, the disparity in labour-force participation among men and women is likely to be between one and four percent wider than reported. India usually performs poorly in female labour-force participation rates compared to most developed and developing countries. So, the broad trend of women’s deteriorating situation in the workforce, globally, was expected to be similar for India, if not worse. But the latest government report, the…

GUJARAT, CRADLE AND HARBINGER OF IDENTITY POLITICS Jan Breman and Ghanshyam Shah This collection of essays analyses the rise of Hindutva, examining the workings of caste, nationalism, neoliberal models of growth and communal violence in Gujarat, beginning with the formation of the state. TULIKA BOOKS, ₹1200, 392 pages THE MIDDLE FINGER Saikat Majumdar This novel follows a young lecturer and poet who takes up a job at a university in Delhi and confronts questions around privilege, sexuality and belonging, and hierarchies within academic institutions in India. SIMON AND SCHUSTER, ₹599, 240 pages ANNUS HORRIBILIS Avinab Datta-Areng A debut collection of impressionistic poems that explore, among other themes, family and relationships, mental health, drug use, and ideas around disintegration and the desire for communication. VINTAGE BOOKS, ₹250, 88 pages WORDS FOR…

In November 2020, thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh mobilised along Delhi’s borders to protest the three farm laws passed in September that year. Continuing for over a year, the farmers’ agitation represented one of the largest and longest-running people’s movements India has seen in recent times. In November 2021, the Narendra Modi government finally relented and announced the repeal of all three laws. The Bharatiya Janata Party saw the mass-based farmers’ movement, which galvanised rural communities, as a threat to its popularity and its prospects in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. In a strategy used by governments and political parties the world over, it sought to break the movement by identifying fault lines within the agrarian communities and supporting counter-mobilisations. Essentially, these are other…

/ LAW RANJAN GOGOI seems to believe he has been wronged. In his recently published autobiography, Gogoi appears as keen to sound humble as he does to portray himself as a victim. There is a sense of absurdity in a former chief justice of India, who accepted a nomination to the Rajya Sabha from the ruling party just months after completing a term with many verdicts gifted to the government, claiming to be a victim. Yet, Gogoi has persisted, undeterred. More than anything else, Gogoi’s autobiography reads like the desperate attempt of a disgraced judge to set the record straight on the many controversies that plagued his career. Gogoi does not try to disguise this endeavour. The title of the autobiography is an open admission of how he feels he…

Bhola Kol, a resident of Chitrakoot in Uttar Pradesh, is incensed at being classified as a member of a Scheduled Caste. He believes he is part of a Scheduled Tribe, and has been fighting to get ST status in the state. “We were tribes, we are tribes, and we want that status,” he told me. “We are more than eighty thousand in Chitrakoot district itself and in lakhs in Uttar Pradesh.” Some of his relatives are classified as ST, he added, but he is considered an SC. “This is not acceptable.” Like Kol, there are many Adivasi residents of Uttar Pradesh who, despite being part of tribal communities, are designated as SC. This means that much of Uttar Pradesh’s tribal population lives without recognition of its core identity. As a…

MADABA BELONGS to the Betta Kuruba tribe, an indigenous pastoral community in Karnataka. With an enviable understanding of native grass species, he is a prized hand at Bandipur National Park, which has focussed on restoring and managing its grassland since 2019. The plan involves, among other things, removing weeds and planting native grass species in their place. The job is tiresome, as Bandipur is covered with a wide variety of weeds, including eupatorium, parthenium and lantana. “Only tribals have the expertise to do this job,” Muniraju, a range forest officer at Bandipur, told me. Muniraju is in charge of grassland management in his range—one of 13 in the national park—as well as drawing fire lines before the summer begins so as to control the regular wildfires Bandipur has been witnessing.…

/ ECONOMY TREKKING, CYCLING, HITCHHIKING, fainting, ailing, scarcely eking out an existence, more than ten million migrant labourers made their perilous journeys home after Modi announced a lockdown in March 2020. The move was as abrupt as it was authoritarian. A mere four hours’ notice was all the republic’s poorest breadwinners had to clear out and hit the road, nine in ten now unemployed, more than half with scarcely enough savings to survive a week, almost all unable to pay their rent. Not all made it. Hundreds, possibly thousands, died, some evading highways to steer clear of police patrols only to be run over by trains. A bailout package followed, generous to business and the bourgeoisie but parsimonious to the poor. Two months on, two-thirds of the urban proletariat was…