Kavitha Kuruganti

11/07/2026

07/06/2026

This is a good summary of the first on-ground peaceful protest by cockroaches in India. I can say this not because I was at Jantar Mantar yesterday but because I was going through social media posts for hours yesterday, as the day progressed. :)

I also saw the really futile efforts of Godi media, troll army personnel and some bhakts of trying to capture incorrect and incomplete frames to project their own narratives, which actually did not go very far.

Thousands of "cockroaches" packed Jantar Mantar to demand Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation. It's founder, Abhijeet Dipke, hours after landing in Delhi, got the cockroaches to Jantar Mantar. But it was educator-activist Sonam Wangchuk who turned a scattered gathering into an attent...

29/05/2026

https://thewire.in/trade/indias-cotton-tariff-removal-reflects-the-hollowness-of-modis-austerity-push
What makes the removal harder to justify is that the tariff did not disrupt business. With the rupee falling, foreign buyers were already getting more value for the US dollar and despite the tariff being in place, imports were reported to have increased by 77% in 2024-25. Thus, the arrangement appeared to work well for farmers, the industry and the broader economy, with tariff revenues adding to national forex and domestic farm gate incomes remaining stable. So why did they change it? .....
However, it seems the textile ministry has chosen a path that may allow for expansion of cotton processing capacity while portending the death of domestic cotton production. Perhaps, this decision reflects geopolitical pressure or is tied to India’s “500 billion investment in America” commitment. Nevertheless, once at play, Indian cotton production will decline and farmers, already burdened by debt and often pushed to extreme mental distress and deaths by su***de, will be forced to shift to other crops. They cannot realistically compete with the 2,000-acre of heavily subsidised American cotton farms. The Indian economy will lose a substantial share of the agri-cash crop economy and foreign farmers will conversely gain at Indian farmers’ loss. Over time, our entire clothing industry may become increasingly reliant on foreign imports, with sustained forex outflows as a result.

The textile ministry's removal of the 11% cotton import tariff, amid US diplomatic pressures and Marco Rubio's visit, risks domestic farm prices while making the industry dependent on foreign imports.

04/05/2026

Divya Raghunandan writes: A few days ago, a few close friends and family went down to be with Ananth when we heard that his health had deteriorated. He was unable to speak but was able to gesture and react to what we were saying. Robert, who rode an auto in Bangalore – that sported a colourful banner saying “Ananthabadmanabhan” – and over the years had become family and his personal auto driver, got the biggest smile.

While Anant passed away this month, he left behind a formidable legacy of setting up two global organisations – Amnesty and Greenpeace – in India that contributed to the shaping of the human rights and environmental justice action in the country. He leveraged the power of individual Indian philanthropy — small and large – by setting up Azim Premji Philanthropies and, later, Rootbridge. He went full circle to create WeLive for the 18 year-old boys and girls who grew up in orphanages and also distilled all the learnings and mental models to address “wicked problems” through Socratus.

Read more on thewire.in

27/04/2026

Some similarities with Ananth, may be.

Randy Pausch ABC Special interview about his "The Last Lecture" and his book, April 2008. For more information about Randy's book, seehttp://www.cs.virginia...

30/01/2026

KISAN SWARAJ SAMMELAN 2026 (SOUTH INDIA), MYSURU, FEB.27, 28 & MAR.1, 2026
Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA-Kisan Swaraj) in collaboration with Prasaranga, Karnataka State Open University (KSOU), Mysuru
ONLY 27 MORE DAYS TO GO FOR THE EVENT!
IMPORTANTLY, ONLY 16 DAYS LEFT, TILL THE LAST DATE FOR REGISTRATION

Please read the "Invitation to Register" documents in english, kannada, telugu, tamil and malayalam by clicking on the links, before registering here: https://sammelan.kisanswaraj.in/south-india

Please also note that on March 2nd, post-sammelan field trips are being organised on four routes (two batches on one route from Mysuru to Kengeri in Bangalore), and participants interested in these field trips have to pay and register separately if they opt in. The field trip option is integrated into the registration process online. Like registrations for the Sammelan, these field trips will also be on first-come, first-registered basis. Please note that if any route does not get filled upto even 50% of the capacity, organisers will be forced to club this route with any other route as appropriate. Similarly, if the registration for any route gets completed soon, that option will be closed for others. You can learn about the field trip routes by clicking on this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rHpFVBaf3R63az4yGMTTrg9jk5DCGteCG5hzZBN4HUI/edit?usp=sharing

Please find the draft program schedule for the Mysuru sammelan here:https://kisanswaraj.in/wp-content/uploads/KSS2026-South-India-KSOU-Mysuru-Schedule-Penultimate-English.pdf . While this overall program's line up is impressive, the detailed schedule is yet to be put together for all the parallel sessions, and will have a wide spectrum of experiences, expertise and innovations captured from the ground, from different states of South India mainly.

The public events which are also open to all citizens in and around Mysuru are diverse, educative and celebratory.

Hurry up and register soon!

Organising Team,
KSS 2026 (South India), Mysuru

06/12/2025

https://youtu.be/1KeSe8B9s1M?si=vhyy0Z1jSekg4ABZ

Explore the enduring legacy of Mahatma Gandhi in this thought-provoking lecture by renowned historian Ramachandra Guha, delivered on 27 October 2025. Guha cr...

10/11/2025

04/11/2025

“First, we think there should be an immediate withdrawal of all promotional claims about genome-edited rice varieties until an independent, transparent scientific review of ICAR’s AICRPR trial data and methodology is done. We need to also have public accountability of ICAR and the Ministry of Agriculture for misleading the nation, so the system can be corrected. Meanwhile a moratorium on genome-edited crop releases until credible biosafety regulations and independent oversight mechanisms are in place and all genome editing needs to be brought under stringent regulations, and all reports related to the R&D of these varieties to be placed in the public domain to avert a disaster for our food system”.

At the press conference, 'The Coalition for a GM-Free India' said,

01/11/2025

Why should Indian Government, which in global platforms has a position of resistance against patents on seeds, push our farmers towards patented technologies, in the name of genome-edited rice varieties? Varieties that are unsafe, that under-perform and that are fettered in patents??

Indian Council of Agricultural Research
Shivraj Singh Chouhan
Ministry of Agriculture & Farmer’s Welfare, Government of India

For an organisation whose glory days are long past, new technology has helped the Indian Council of Agriculture (ICAR) find a place in the sun once again. In ea