THE National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD) has condemned the brutal lathi charge on disabled protesters in Pune, Maharashtra, on February 25. The protesters mainly belonging to the deaf community were demanding the implementation of the provisions of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act with regard to education and employment. They sought to highlight the fact that an overwhelming majority of educational institutions continue to be inaccessible.

THE Supreme Court issued written orders that were made public on February 20, to evict all adivasis and traditional forest dwellers from forest land whose claims have not been accepted. These orders came on the petition Wild Life First vs Ministry of Forest and Environment, (Writ petition(s) Civil No(s) 109/2008, order dated 13-2-2019) which challenged the Forest Rights Act itself. At present according to the latest figures available (December 2018) of the 42.19 lakh claims made only 18.89 lakh claims have been accepted.

THE aerial strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed run camp in Balakot in Pakistan was conducted to send an effective message that India will not tolerate terrorist attacks such as in Pulwama, sponsored from across the border.  The extent of the success of the operation, in terms of destroying the militant base, is yet to be established.  The reputed international defence monitoring media agency, Jane’s Information Group, has termed the claims about the operation’s success as “speculative”.

WHENEVER the unemployment problem is under discussion a common response is that overcoming it requires an even higher GDP growth rate than we have been having. This completely misses the point. Unemployment is the manifestation of certain social relations; unemployment will continue to grow, no matter how high the rate of growth of GDP within those social relations.