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Dear Reader,
What is common to Tesla, the Indian Navy, and the Niti Ayog? Their interest in the strongest and tiniest materials ever produced in the world – single-walled carbon nanotubes. So tiny that it is 10,000 times thinner than human hair and has a tensile strength 100 times over steel – as revolutionary as the invention of stainless steel.
From being used to build spacecrafts, the nanotubes have a wide array of uses – for instance, Tesla Motors wants them for making batteries and the Indian government for wastewater treatment. And this is built by an Indian company in Bengaluru -- NoPo Nanotechnologies. The only company in the world, ThePrint notes, that manufactures carbon nanotubes of such small diameter -- the “Rajnikanth of all materials”.
Recent years have been witness to an unbridled and blatant search and seizure regime, where digital agencies demand access to devices and data almost at will, with seemingly no safeguards or norms in place.
This exercise of the state’s strong arm is not the “vengeful design” of an individual officer, The India Forum argues, but the result of a legal framework premised on the right of the increasing assertion of the state’s powers, and because they were designed in an era when the citizen’s right to privacy was not even on the table.
On its way to completion, the Vizhinjam International Deepwater Seaport project near Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram has witnessed 140-day-long agitations and protests by the fisher community which was unliterally “suspended” recently. The major political formations from the Left to the Right, including the government, have been arraigned in support of the project. Keraleeyam Masika talks to a prominent activist working for the fisher community to find out the other side of the story.
And, two weeks ago, the Supreme Court once again reiterated the ban on the ‘two-finger test’ in rape cases. The test is scientifically inaccurate, patriarchal, and an affront to the dignity of sexually assaulted women, the Court said. However, India Development Review says that while the judgment is laudable the Court misses out on fundamental issues of gender stereotyping in rape trials.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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