Why is Tamil Nadu detaining farmers under the Goondas Act?
Read more at: https://dbrief.news/d/dkOPt

✅ RELEVANCE: Agrarian Sector, Protests

🔵 A 70-hour Workweek? | Economic and Political Weekly

https://www.epw.in/journal/2023/45-46/editorials/70-hour-workweek.html

Rather than increasing work hours, the focus should be on improving labour productivity. 

The current debate in the national media about the need for increasing working hours comes at a time when demand for a shorter workweek resonates around the world. This debate was kicked off when a doyen of industry suggested that young people should be ready to work 70 hours a week to aid development. This suggestion is not new, as a similar demand had been made in 2020 to increase work time to a minimum of 64 hours a week to compensate for the loss of output during the pandemic.

However, the call for increasing working hours is not confined to just a few large employers. Many states amended the Factories Act, 1948 during the lockdown to increase the maximum number of working hours from eight to 12 per day and the maximum working hours per week from 48 to 72. These states include Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, and Odisha. A few months back, Tamil Nadu had introduced an amendment (which was later withdrawn) to the Factories Act, 1948 to increase the duration of factory shifts from nine to 12 hours a week. Similarly, Karnataka had also legislated (and also later withdrawn) to allow for 12-hour factory shifts sometime earlier. The reason cited for extending factory shifts is the need to run the factories round the clock using two shifts to beat the global competition.

✅ RELEVANCE: Work and Economic Life

Too many foreign students? Dutch universities slam ‘ridiculous’ proposal to cap foreign students
Read more at: https://dbrief.news/d/UGken

🔵 RELEVANCE: Education, Work and Economic Life, Migration

🔵 On the sub-categorisation within castes | Explained - The Hindu

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/on-the-sub-categorisation-within-castes-explained/article67541707.ece

The principal argument for sub-categorisation of SCs has been the graded inequalities among SC communities. The thrust of it has been that even among the marginalised, there are communities that have lesser access to basic facilities. As a result, the relatively more forward communities among them have managed to avail benefits consistently while crowding the more backward ones out. The solution, therefore is to sub-categorise the communities and provide separate reservation to the more backward communities within the reservation meant for SCs.

However, on the other hand, both the SC and ST Commissions have noted that allotting separate reservations within the categories would not really address the root cause of the problem. In an internal note prepared by the NCST, it had explained that the most backward SCs are lagging so far behind forward SC communities that a separate quota would not help. It said that the idea was to ensure representation at all levels. But given the disparity, even if posts were reserved at higher levels, these most backward SCs would not have enough candidates to be considered for it in the first place. Both the NCSC and the NCST had thus recommended that existing schemes and government benefits should first reach these sections before any sub-categorisation.

✅ RELEVANCE: Caste, Reservation

🔵 The Global Rise of Authoritarianism | Economic and Political Weekly

https://www.epw.in/engage/article/global-rise-authoritarianism

Why Study Authoritarianism?

Understanding authoritarianism better can help us navigate the “social phenomena such as ethnocentricism, prejudice and intergroup hostility” (Stellmacher and Petzel 2005). Authoritarian regimes have often been linked to xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment. Many scholars believe that investigating authoritarianism can help us better analyse group social behaviours.
Michel Foucault similarly argued, “what makes the domination of a group caste, or a class, together with the resistance and revolts which the domination comes up against, a central phenomenon in the history of societies is that they manifest in a massive and universalizing form, at the level of the whole social body, the locking together of power relation with relations of strategy and the results proceeding from their interaction.”
Many psychologists and sociologists have also unmasked why some citizens display unwavering obedience to authority.  For instance, Wilhelm Reich, explained in his book, ‘The Mass Psychology of Fascism’  how fascists and authoritarians come into power through their political and ideologically oriented sexual repression on the popular masses. He further explained how the fascist movement feeds upon authoritarian patriarchal social structures. Similarly, in Eric Fromm’s work, amid all the insecurities that the modern world has to offer, authoritarianism is described as a “mechanism of escape.”

✅ RELEVANCE: Power, Politics

🔵 International Men's Day (IMD) is celebrated on November 19 every year.

It's a day to recognize the positive contributions of men and boys to society, family, and community.

It also highlights issues that men face, such as: Abuse, Homelessness, Parental alienation, Suicide, Violence.

The theme for 2023 is "Healthy Men, Healthy World". The four sub-themes are:

🔹Take action
🔹Stay healthy
🔹Check in on a mate
🔹Improving male health together

Some ways to celebrate IMD include:

🔺Valuing male role models
🔺Acknowledging the contribution of men and boys
🔺Improving male health
🔺Tackling discrimination and disadvantage
🔺Fostering positive gender relations
🔺Making the world a safer place for everyone

Good Morning 🌞

Good Morning 🌅

🔵 Looking Back At Lagaan: Was Cricket a Breeding Ground for Nationalism? | Economic and Political Weekly

https://www.epw.in/engage/discussion/looking-back-lagaan-was-cricket-breeding-ground

Boria Majumdar reads Lagaan as a “commentary on the evolution and development of cricket in colonial India” where defeating the colonists in their own game was a thing of pride for Indians. Cricket became a medium for India to assert itself and the sport became the “breeding ground” for nationalism. 

Nissim Mannathukkaren questions Majumdar’s arguments on cricket and nationalism, stating that the film, by showing unity among all Indians, ignores the realities of the stratification of Indian society. Specifically, Mannathukkaren claims, Lagaan ignores Indian oppressors such as rajas and taluqdars and presents the British as the sole oppressors of Indians.

✅ RELEVANCE: Nationalism

Good Morning 🌞

1st visuals of workers stuck inside collapsed tunnel in Uttarakhand surface

Pressure from parents is the problem, not coaching institutes: SC on student suicides

Good Morning 🌞

Good Morning 🌞

🔵 Young Indian parents are losing their children to foster care abroad - Frontline

https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/controversy-young-indian-parents-are-losing-their-children-to-foster-care-abroad-for-incompetent-parenting-mrs-chatterjee-vs-norway-case-sagarika-chakraborty-dhara-shah-priyadarshini-lingaraj-patil/article67343742.ece

Though all such children are entitled to kinship care, this is not always possible, given the absence of the extended family in the country of residence. The children are placed with foster carers who do not have any ethnic or cultural links to the child’s country of origin. “As a consequence, these children... are unable to develop any bonds with their country of origin or their extended families. They age out of foster care in a state of double alienation—they are not citizens of the country of residence and have no substantial ties with their country of origin,” they wrote.

🔵 The Not-so-curious Case of the Nightie Ban | Economic and Political Weekly

https://www.epw.in/journal/2018/51/postscript/not-so-curious-case-nightie-ban.html

Why did a village in Andhra Pradesh ban the seemingly innocuous nightie?

Anywhere in India, nay, anywhere in the whole world, you will be hard-pressed to find a woman who has never ever been told what to wear or has never had to think of whether her clothes would make someone else feel uncomfortable. Seemingly simple choices of how women dress or move their own bodies in public spaces or in the home are, in fact, matters of control and power over women’s agency. Clothes are used as a tool to either sexualise the female body or strip it of its sexuality to best suit the oppressor’s need at the moment. Think of why the clothes of women who are victims of sexual assault are called into question. Or why widowed women are even today discouraged from wearing “attractive” clothing or accessories. These powers vary in potency, but are the omnipresent powers of the state, of patriarchy, of intimate relationships, of society, and of internalised patriarchy in women.

Recently, a coastal fishing village in Andhra Pradesh, Tokalapalli, decided to ban women from wearing nighties between 7 am and 7 pm. The humble nightie doesn’t seem to warrant this kind of a reaction, surely! The nightie is as innocuous as it is inoffensive. It is an oversized, loose fitting, one-piece attire that women across India wear as night clothes and during the day and out in public places too. In smaller towns and working-class neighbourhoods, it is not uncommon to see women walk about with neatly combed hair adorned with flowers, their faces aglow with a greyish tinge of talcum powder, pottu (vermillion) and eyeliner in place, whilst wearing a nightie accessorised with a dupatta.

🔵 Rainbow Rishta: Queer love in focus

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/rainbow-rishta-queer-love-in-focus-9028050/

The wholesome docuseries Rainbow Rishta takes viewers on a journey where discussions revolve around queerness, queer love, and the challenges that the community has inherited — and is fighting against. It is an innovative attempt to convey both the complexity of queer love and the idea that queer love can transcend physical intimacy. Simultaneously, it compels us to question whether what is portrayed in the series truly encapsulates the essence of queer love.

Does the end goal of queer love also align with the conventional heteronormative institution of marriage? And is queer love confined to the monogamous understanding of love involving two individuals, similar to the heteronormative model?