Peoples Telangana

REVISITING WHAT KHUSHWANT SINGH WROTE ABOUT INDIA 50 YEARS AGO. Lets face facts. India is often a very disagreeable country. It is seriously dirty, dishonest and indisciplined. The sights one sees everyday desensitize and dehumanise. Then we have a seriously corrupt and debauched system where extortion and evasion are routine. Recently I was at a marriage function. There was chaos reigning. The marriage seemed a private affair between a few on a very public pandal. The rice shower was quite disorderly. Then lunch was served. The descent on the food laden table was worse than a swarm of flies descending. It made a good metaphor for India. I know I will attract a lot of flak for saying this. But unless we are willing to recognise what is wrong, instead of my country right or wrong, we will not become a better country . MG Written by Khushwant Singh in 1970 Why am I an Indian? I did not have any choice: I was born one. If the good Lord had consulted me on the subject I might have chosen a...

Tribal Youth Killed by Bastar Police, Mistaken for Naxalite, Family Claims He Was a Government Cook In a tragic incident in Chhattisgarh’s Indravati Tiger Reserve Park, Bastar police allegedly killed a tribal youth, Mahesh Kudiam, branding him a Naxalite. According to a press note issued by the police on June 10, seven Maoists, including prominent figures like Sudhakar and Bhaskar, were killed in an encounter. However, Mahesh Kudiam’s family refutes these claims, asserting that he was not a Maoist but a government-employed cook who provided meals for children at a local government school. Mahesh, a father of seven, was reportedly a salaried employee, with the government depositing his wages into his bank account every month. His family alleges that he was unjustly targeted and killed, raising serious questions about the Bastar police’s actions. While villagers have acknowledged that the other six individuals killed in the encounter were M...

Days before American warplanes struck Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 22nd, satellite imagery captured a flurry of activity at the fortified Fordow site. Trucks and vehicles moved with purpose, suggesting Iran was clearing sensitive equipment. The strikes, authorised by President Donald Trump, hit Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, yet Iran reported minimal damage and no nuclear contamination. Secret talks in Oman between American and Iranian envoys had faltered just weeks earlier. Was this a choreographed act of geopolitical theatre, or a genuine clash narrowly averted from catastrophe? The notion of a staged conflict—a “global act”, as some call it—has gained traction among sceptics. Social media posts  claim Iran used American warnings, relayed through Omani intermediaries, to evacuate key assets, rendering the strikes symbolic. Trump, known for boasting about dealmaking, has hinted at such arrangements in the past, famously claiming he could resolve global crises with a phone call....

In pre-colonial India, administrative surveys akin to what might be termed "Khanasumari" (or "Khānēsumārī," a Marathi/Kannada word for census-like counts) frequently included caste data, reflecting the integral role of caste in social and economic organization. While not as systematic or centralized as modern caste censuses (e.g., the British colonial census of 1931 or the planned 2027 Indian census), these surveys collected caste information to facilitate taxation, land revenue, labor allocation, and social hierarchy management. This article explores the historical evidence of caste data collection in pre-colonial India, particularly in the context of regional surveys that could be associated with the term "Khanasumari." Historical Context of Caste Data Collection Caste, encompassing both varna (the four-fold system of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra) and jati (specific sub-castes), was a cornerstone of pre-colonial Indian society, influencing occup...

టి.చిరంజీవులు ఐఏఎస్(రిటైర్డ్) మరియు చైర్మన్, బిసి ఇంటలెక్చువల్స్ ఫోరమ్, తెలంగాణ “పుట్టుకతో మనిషి స్వేచ్చాజీవి, కానీ ప్రతి అడుగులో అతను సంకెళ్లతో బంధించబడ్డాడు” అని ఫ్రెంచ్ విప్లవ కవి మరియు తత్వవేత్త “రూసో” ఈ మాటలు చెప్పినప్పుడు అతను వర్ణవ్యవస్థలో బానిసతనం చవిచూసిన భారతీయులను ఊహించి ఉండకపోవచ్చు. కానీ ఆయన మాటలు ఈ దేశంలోని కోట్లాది బహుజనుల జీవన గాథలను అక్షరాలా వర్ణించాయి. భారతదేశంలో పుట్టుకే పాపమై, కులమే శాపంగా మారిపోయిన వారు శూద్రులు, అతి శూద్రులు. మానవ హక్కుల నుంచి దూరం చేయబడి దాస్యశృంఖలాల్లో బంధించబడి వేల ఏళ్లుగా “సేవ చేయడమే నీ ధర్మం” అనే జెండా కింద అణచివేయబడ్డారు. మనుధర్మ శాస్త్రము, బ్రాహ్మణ ధర్మ వ్యవస్థ, రాజరికాల చేతిలో బహుజనులు కేవలం ఒక విలువ లేని శ్రామికులుగా మిగిలిపోయారు. భారతీయ సామాజిక వ్యవస్థ వేల సంవత్సరాలుగా మనుషుల్ని వర్ణము, కులము పేరుతో విడదీసి అగ్రవర్ణాల చేతిలో శూద్రులను, అతిశూద్రులను అతి క్రూరంగా అణచివేసి వారికి మానవ హక్కులు లేకుండా చేసి నిర్ధాక్షిణ్యముగా దోపిడీకి గురిచేసింది. మను ధర్మశాస్త్రం శూద్రులను మిగతా మూడు వర్ణాలకు సేవకులుగా పేర్కొంది. అలాగే “న స్త్రీ స్వాతంత్...

In India, where caste silently dictates access to education, jobs, and dignity, the promise of a caste census in the 2027 national count has sparked a fragile hope. Trina Vithayathil, a sociologist and author of Counting Caste , sees a chance to chart the tangled web of caste, gender, and religion. Yet she warns that without ironclad transparency and accountability, the census could slip into India’s long tradition of “bureaucratic deflection”—a tactic to bury caste data and shield systemic inequities . Will 2027 finally confront caste head-on, or will it be another dodge in a decades-long game? A Breakthrough in Bihar Bihar’s 2023 caste survey offers a tantalizing glimpse of what data can do. Published in October and expanded a month later, it exposed deep disparities, spurring swift changes to reservation policies for marginalized groups. For advocates, it was a victory: evidence driving equity. But Vithayathil, in her book ( Counting Caste , Cambridge University Press, April 30, 202...

Mohan Guruswamy The Modi government has all but wiped out Indian supported and managed NGOs and think tanks. Today all the prominent policy thinktanks in Delhi like Brookings, Carnegie are foreign funded. The few that exist in cracks, like IDSA, CLAWS, CAPS, ICS, USI etcare government funded and seldom miss the cue of the masters. The independent thinktanks have all but disappeared because critical comment scares away would be donors. The only Indian thinktanks that flourish in Delhi like VIF, India Foundation etc are RSS, BJP and foreign (mostly Israeli) funded. They can hardly be called thinktanks and are really thought tanks pushing their zany ideas. Of the rest ORF has chosen to mainly function as an event organizer for the MEA and CPR lives precariously and vicariously on state funding that limits its independent discourse. NGO's like GREENPEACE too are not averse to resorting to untruths and half truths sometimes to suit the objectives of rival corporate interests. The Brent ...