PRAGOTI

 The Commonwealth Games occupies a lot of acreage in newspapers as they are on. The Games occupied even more acreage before the real games were on. Then, the focus was on the utter incompetence, cheap attitude and corruption associated with the Organising committee and the Delhi State government. Somewhere in the entire coverage, not much was said about those hidden deliberately because of the Games - workers, pavement dwellers, and the poor. Even the not so poor among the Dengue affected (running into the tens of thousands) were hidden. This is very much a re-enaction of what acclaimed film director Satyajit Ray depicted in the satiric film, Hirak Rajar Deshe. 

The concept of ''infrastructure'' itself, has a class dimension.

It is surprising that the NAC-recommended press release does not reflect any spirit of the strong social-political action behind the mobilisations around the food security issue since last few years. More distressing is to hear such discussions when the country has been witnessing high inflation fuelled by higher levels of food inflation. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the fears of the proposed FSA turning into a sham and, in turn, only used as a rhetorical cover against the opposition has almost come true.

Parthasarathy T works as a resource-person helping fisherpeople organise their production and marketing work in the Kutch. In the course of his work, he encountered the problem of displacement of fisherpeople because of large industrial projects and mid-way he had to change his work to activism in favour of the poor fisherpeople. Details of the struggle are available at www.masskutch.blogspot.com and in this article. Partha writes on how he leveraged information technology tools to help in the struggle.