PRAGOTI

[ Editor's note:  This is the second article in an in-depth 3 part series (Part 1, Part 3) on the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster by the noted activist N.D. Jayaprakash. The author is the Joint Secretary of the Delhi Science Forum and Co-Convenor of the Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh Sahyog Samiti. ]

 
 C.Umashankar,a well known Dalit IAS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre was suspended from the service recently by the Tamil Nadu Government,alleging him of producing a fake caste certificate.Umashankar earned reputation by taking an unflinching position against corruption and nepotism which has irked the prominent Dravidian parties of the state. Pragoti presents a translation of an article written in Theekathir about this in detail highlighting the brazen caste discrimination that exist behind the rationalist facade of DMK and the deepening of the crony capitalism in the state. Translation courtesy, Karthik.
A complaint filed by Shri.Umashankar against the Tamil Nadu Government in front of the National Commission for SC/ST is also uploaded here.

Against the “means-based approach” to development that the bourgeoisie projects, the left must project a “rights-based approach”. Since “rights” are guarantors of welfare gains, every winning of rights likewise strengthens them. The acquisition of rights on the part of the people, including rights to minimum bundles of goods, services and security, amounts therefore to winning crucial battles in the class war for the transcendence of capitalism. If the left were to put on its agenda a struggle for people’s rights and adopt a rights-based approach to development as opposed to the means-based approach of the bourgeois formations, it would not constitute a retreat into abstract humanism but would be an integral part of the dialectics of subversion of the logic of capital. Prabhat Patnaik writes in the Economic and Political Weekly

The UPA’s promise to ensure adequate availability of food articles in the country for assured food security to all Indian citizens through the deliberations of the NAC is fraught with a series of exclusions. It excludes all APL households or roughly 73% of the people in 75% of the country from its coverage on the basis of the dubious and discredited Planning Commission estimates, writes Simta Gupta.