I’m too sickened by all that’s going on around and about me to write much today. I’m just going to point towards the various online petitions I’m signing and the on-ground protests I’m sympathising with – and hope that somehow, somewhere, something changes for the better… Tomorrow better be another day. Or as Yoda might say: Another day tomorrow better be.
About the siege in Lebanon, a description from within, and anti-siege protests from within Israel (the latter much tougher to find online than the former). And two petitions against it: Justice for Lebanon and Save Lebanese Civilians.
About the Right to Information Act of India and the government’s proposed amendment: to remove file notings from much of the decision-making conveyed to citizens (so what does that leave of the ‘information’ given to us by ‘public servants’ and ‘polity-cians’, hmm?). A petition against the amendment.
Finally, our Hor’ble [sic] Minister for Human Resources Development does it again. First he cannot cogently explain to an articulate, privileged and (let’s face it) extremely cocooned Indian elite why some form of reservations – affirmative action in a quota form – might be necessary in higher education and then goes ahead and announces such a badly designed policy that all nuanced arguments are defeated by sheer crudity from all sides. Then when it’s clear to everyone else – but him – that true affirmation can only begin with primary education, he buries the Right to Education Bill, which might have (for all its perceived shortcomings) ensured that all children from the age of 6 to 14 years, had access to schooling.
The Campaign against Child Labour begins a month long protest against this tomorrow.
* Update: 24th July. And in my inbox today, a petition for the retrial of the Priyadarshini Mattoo case, a young student raped and murdered in 1996, whose alleged murderer was acquitted. Priyadarshini’s father has been inspired by the public outrage against Jessica Lall‘s murderer getting away scot free (despite dozens of witnesses), which has prompted a re-opening of that case.