Dilip Simeon's blog

Report by Ranjan Ghosh M.C.C  ( Marxist Coordination Committee) led by  A K Roy  had been campaigning against the torture and exploitation of Electro Steel Company for the last 9 months. Various other political parties had launched campaign against the same company from time to time during the past 5 years, gave fiery  speeches etc. only to be purchased by the company ( Bolero, Scorpio, contracts…). The aggrieved villagers whose land has been purchased (read looted!) at throw away prices, whose village entry road had been blocked to forcefully uproot them, whose wells and other water resources have dried up due to huge extraction of underground water through deep bore wells of the company, had nowhere to go.  Those who dared to oppose(legally) had been implicated in criminal cases like attempt to murder, snatching of arms, dacoity  etc. and beaten by the police and security guards. The local people who got the unskilled jobs in the factory are working u...

Three weeks after they fled rioters and sought refuge at a temporary camp in neighbouring Shamli district, Muslims from 40 villages of Muzaffarnagar have been collectively booked by an arm of the UP government for encroaching on forest land. By the government's own admission, some 10,000 Muslims are still at Malakpur, the largest relief camp for the riot-hit. Now, the state forest department has filed an FIR against "thousands of Muslims" for encroaching forest land since September 12.The FIR has been filed by Narender Kumar, regional forest officer, Kairana range, Shamli district, under sections of the Indian Penal Code and Forest Act against "sharanarthi Muslim samudaay ke log, naam, pataa agyaat, hazaaron ki sankhya mein". The FIR mentions how unidentified people have encroached on forest land and chopped trees: "agyaat mujliman dwara van vibhag ki bhoomi par atikraman kar... per kaatna..." When his comments were sought, Shamli SP A K Rai s...

Department of Sociology  held a get together on 5th September 2013 to celebrate   Dr. Rabindra Ray's two decade long association with the Department. Rabindra and Dilip in Oxford, 1985 More from the farewell:   http://sociology.du.ac.in/index.php/178-uncategorised My friend This poem was sent me in 1996 by Laloo.  It was soon after we had met in the D School lawns

"based on the Brotherhood’s doctrinal literature and actual behavior, it is clear that the core of the organization centers on an ideology of an “Islamist state,” “Islam ic transnationalism,” or “Paxa Islamica” and on notions of a government based on God’s sovereignty instead of the people’s sovereignty.rooted social and cultural conservatism within the confines of liberal democracy. " Note:  On September 23, the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters issued a preliminary injunction ordering the shutdown of the Brotherhood. Yet, dissolving or legally banning the group will have only a very partial effect in practice. As long as the Brotherhood maintains its core constituency of supporters, networks, and ideological believers, it can survive intact as a social movement and organization despite its official illegal status as it did for decades under Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood faces a tremendously difficult but crucial choice about what role it will try ...

Our bodies, our future! Governments must provide the right to safe and legal abortion. This right must be recognised now AND enshrined within the new development agenda! On September 28 Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion sexual and reproductive rights activists call on the governments around the world to put an end to discrimination of women and girls and demand  access to safe and legal abortion services and information as their human right. While recognising the substantial progress made over the last 20 years of implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action, including recognition of sexual and reproductive rights as human rights; their inclusion as part of many national, regional and international policy frameworks and the development of public policies allowing better access to sexual and reproductive health in the world, such progress has not been universal and many countries are still failing to meet targets set out in the original ICPD Programme...

Curiosity drives humanity. When confronted with a new phenomenon, we are compelled to search for understanding. We can then control the science with new technologies, making life easier. This, says AAAS Fellow Raymond Laflamme, grants us time to be curious.  In the rapidly evolving field of quantum computing, curiosity over the last hundred years has driven scientists to the brink of controlling this once exotic  world. Quantum computers, with the capacity to complete in an instant calculations that a classical computer with all the time and energy in the universe could never solve, will propel the next information revolution. Yet the concept of quantum computing is young and, so far, no scientist can predict with certainty when that revolution will occur. For one AAAS fellow and his team of researchers, the missing tool to jump-start this revolution may be found in diamonds.   Observations and theories in quantum mechanics have led to stories of subatomic particles ...

Water has been found on  Mars , according to measurements taken by  Nasa’s Curiosity rover. The space agency’s probe found the liquid in the Martian soil. The water isn’t free-flowing but bound with materials in the dirt and made accessible after heating to high temperatures. Analysis revealed Martian dirt is approximately 2 per cent water, meaning there are about two pints of water per cubic foot, or enough “to take to the gym.” Nasa  scientists say the water could help sustain Martian explorers in the future.  Laurie Leshin, lead author of the study, published in the journal   Science , said: “This dirt on   Mars   is interesting because it seems to be about the same everywhere you go. If you are a human explorer, this is really good news because you can quite easily extract water from almost anywhere.  She said that if you take “a cubic foot of this dirt and you just heat it a little bit - a few hundred degrees - you'll actually get ...