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Dear Reader,
The role and functioning of criminal investigation agencies have long been under the lens. They have often been accused of callousness and misuse of power, thus significantly impacting their competency and finesse in their probes. This often has had real and tragic consequences for citizens who are at the receiving end.
TrueCopy Think, through an evocative documentary, chronicles one such stark case from Kerala, where a man, based on the probe of three agencies – the state police, the crime branch and the CBI – faced torture and harassment and was eventually convicted of killing his father. It took the High Court of Kerala to step in, examine the evidence, and having found it grossly inadequate, castigate the agencies for “blotched investigations” and set him free. The human cost of this insensate probe – a total of more than 10 years of a citizen’s life behind bars and a family torn asunder.
Elections are sometimes a naked contest for power but they are also, ideally, a time for issues to be taken up and thrashed out in full public view, a contest in ideas and issues. Therefore, as five state assemblies – Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, and Rajasthan – are on the cusp of voting, it was expected that critical issues -- women’s rights, for instance -- will be up and front of the discourse.
However, The Citizen travels across Rajasthan in the run-up to the polls and discovers that in the state, the issues of women, and the challenges they face, are far away from the election debate.
The events in Manipur have focussed attention on the Northeast of India where conflicts of ethnicity and identity have disrupted the peace, especially when years of efforts to integrate the region into the Indian Union were seen to be a qualified success.
The propensity for ethnic and tribal identities to re-emerge, The India Forum argues, stems from the “colonial order of administering tribe and territory”, laid down by the British -- where the political basis for governance was the tribal-ethnic loyalties. This, it argues, continues to be so causing latent dissonance of ‘rights, reservations, and political economy’ to come to the boil time and again.
And, Kashmir, known for its verdant valleys and unparalleled scenic beauty – ‘a heaven on earth’ – is considered the bellwether for India’s climate. The health of the glaciers and water bodies and precipitation patterns serve as a premonition of what is to come, for the rest of India.
This is why red flags are being raised, as the Valley witnesses a clear and present impact of climate change with unseasonal glacier melt and both premature snowfalls and snowmelt. Article 14 reports from Srinagar that the weather changes have severely emasculated the waters of the Jhelum river -- the lifeline of the region -- causing unprecedented heatwaves impacting apple harvests, water supply, power supply and irrigation – the critical inputs into livelihoods and lives of the region.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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