We The People

Be it Serena Williams - one of the world's greatest female athletes, film actors like Kareena Kapoor Khan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan or a commoner walking on streets, most of us have been victims of body shaming at some point of time in our lives. Body shaming is a practice of humiliating people by making critical comments about their physical appearance. On this edition of We The People, the question is, who gets to decide if someone is fit or not? Is the obsession with weight and colour fair? Have we gone way too far under the pressure of looking "perfect"?

Last month, the Environment Ministry came out with a notification banning the sale of cattle for slaughter in animal markets across the country. Various student groups and political parties registered their discontent by holding beef fests. Incidents of violent clashes followed. On We The People, we ask: are the new cattle sale norms a proxy for a national beef ban? If the order is only about tough action on animal cruelty and smuggling, why is the focus only on the bovine breed? Will the move hamper India's flourishing meat export industry? With unprofitable resale value for cattle, will the move end up bringing down the country's milch population?

The past few weeks saw Uttar Pradesh's Saharanapur singed by disturbing caste clashes becoming the order of the day. In response, Delhi's Jantar Mantar witnessed a major Dalit rally on May 21st, against the alleged violence by upper caste Thakurs. At Jantar Mantar, thousands of Dalit protesters gathered under the banner of Bhim Army to protest against the atrocities they faced. On this edition of We The People, we ask: Is Yogi government failing to ensure its crime-free state promise? Have mainstream Dalit political fronts lost their ground? Is Dalit affirmation taking the centre stage? Has the Dalit Uprising 2.0 begun?

A 3-year-old Modi government has a lot to boast about: be it the passage of the GST bill or a consistently high GDP. On the flip side, job creation under the government has dipped to a record 8-year low. There are other worrying signs as well: the agricultural sector grew at a measly 1.2% in 2015-16 while expenditure on education remains stagnant at 3% of the GDP. On this edition of We The People, we ask: does this government have a plan to convert 'jobless' growth into real jobs? How successful have the numerous government schemes like Make in India and Skill India been? Have risky moves like demonetisation actually worked in the government's favour?

On April 17 this year, the President accepted the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on Official Language, giving a significant push to the use of Hindi in public discourse. The move has yet again invoked the ire of the non-Hindi speaking population of India, with the DMK threatening a replay of the anti-Hindi protests in Tamil Nadu in the 1960s. Another facet of this language debate is the deep Hindi-English class divide. On this edition of We The People, we ask: Is Hindi spoken widely enough to be the 'national' language of India? Is the Hindi push counter-productive to the organic growth of the language? Is the knowledge of only regional languages disadvantageous?

With two Indian soldiers mutilated in Poonch, the country, and not just the government is livid. And yet again, the government has issued strong statements. While the Sports Minister has said that terror and sports don't go along, a delegation of 50 Pakistani students was sent back on the advice of the Foreign Ministry. Clearly the cultural ties with Pakistan have taken a severe beating. But is severing cultural ties the answer? The Indian Army has obliquely hinted at military reaction at the time and place of its choosing. In response to the claims of beheading of Indian soldiers by the Indian Army, the Pakistan Army has denied any such occurrence. On this edition of We The People we ask: Can India do better? Is there anything we can do other than diplomatic statements, surgical strikes, and banning Pakistani players and artists from the country? These actions might satisfy public anger in the immediate term, but do they actually advance India's long term interest?

On April 24, 25 personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force or CRPF were killed in an attack by the Maoists. The attack came a month after 12 CRPF jawans were killed in a similar ambush on March 11. Maoists even stole 10 weapons from the dead troopers. In 2010, 75 CRPF troopers were killed in Dantewada in the heart of the so called "red corridor". On this episode of We The People, we are asking: Has the CRPF borne the brunt of India's decades-long battle with Maoists? Are our security forces sitting ducks in the hands of the Maoists? Are more boots on the ground the way forward? And, with 2017 marking the 50th anniversary of the Naxal movement, do we need to rethink and reevaluate the strategy to deal with the Naxals?

The Kashmir Valley is on the boil once again. The Srinagar by-polls on April 9 recorded the lowest ever turnout of 7.13%. The polling took place amidst widespread violence and arson resulting in nine deaths. The unrest is just as palpable on social media as it is on the ground and both seem to be feeding into each other. On one hand we have a video showing a CRPF jawan being heckled at a polling booth, on the other we have a civilian being used as a human shield by the Army. On this edition of We The People, we ask: How did we get here? Did governments, both at the Centre and the state, wither away dividends of peace after the unrest of 2010 subsided? Why are more and more Kashmiri youngsters turning to militancy? And does the Modi government have a roadmap for peace in the troubled Valley? Is dialogue with all stakeholders the only way out of this violent and long-drawn stalemate?

The Modi team, during the 2014 election campaign, promised "minimum government, maximum governance". But in the last three years, we have seen a combination of judicial and executive action at state and central levels, many of which have been accused of infringing people's personal liberty. Elements of the government are trying to control what we eat, drink, watch and even speak. After BJP's recent victory in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the re-emergence of anti-Romeo squads and increased brazenness of 'gau-rakshaks' or cow vigilantes have raised many questions. On this edition of We The People, we ask: Is India now a state of prohibition? Has the government gone too far by dictating how the free citizen of India should behave? Is the state playing a bigger role in our lives than we would like?

Days after a series of attacks on Africans just an hour's drive from capital New Delhi and a sharp barb by foreign diplomats, the Indian government rejected that the incidents were racist in nature, pending an investigation. On this edition of We The People, we ask: Are we in denial when we say that India is not racist? Can we hope to resolve an issue without acknowledging it? Are African envoys right in terming these attacks as xenophobic or are such incidents, like the Indian government says, are criminal offences and not racial attacks? Also, how do we respond to the racially-motivated attacks against the North- East Indians?