P. Sainath
@PSainath_org
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A lot of those we call 'highly educated', weren't highly educated. They were expensively educated.
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1/7. Bhagat Singh Jhuggian, 93, is one of India’s last living freedom fighters. Expelled from school, an official circular called him ‘dangerous’ and a ‘revolutionary’ – at age 11! He became a courier for the radical underground. Story link at end of thread. #IndependenceDay2021
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1/5. Shocked by Sushant Singh Rajput suicide coverage – compared with that of 330,000 farmer suicides since 1995? It’s about the money. Talk TV is a lucrative revenue model. Yak and gab costs a lot less than good journalism.#RheaChakraborty #mediatrial #media #SushantSinghRajput.
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1/7. Why is it so hard for the media to admit that the farmers at Delhi’s gates represent the largest peaceful democratic protest the world has seen in years – that too, organised at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic? Story link at end of thread. #FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed
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1/8. Most Indians see the Big Fat Indian Wedding as a national achievement and are not put off by it, according to TV commentary, including on BBC. Really? Did BBC, anyone, do a poll/survey of most Indians? People hit the streets for what they see as a national achievement –
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1/6. ‘Tipu Sultan was the only prince who died fighting the British… With (his death) Indian Independence was extinguished for a century and a half.’ Not quotes from Karnataka’s new government but from a BJP founder-member. Story link at end of thread. #Karnataka #TipuSultan.
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1/8. Was Independence the gift of a few Oxbridge elites? As Gandhi put it, not great men, but ‘the people themselves are the cause’ of revolutions. My book The Last Heroes: Footsoldiers of Indian Freedom (Penguin) out in November, looks at 16 such people. #IndependenceDay2022
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1/7. Home Minister Amit Shah recently declared that “No one can stop us from writing history anew” (ToI June 11). The outrageous arrest of Teesta Setalvad shows we’re not just rewriting the past. But our contemporary era and present as well. #TeestaSetalvad #MohammedZubair.
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1/5. Barbed wire, Barricades and Border Security Force to stop farmers from reaching Delhi? Wow! There’s Cooperative Federalism for you. Or is it cooperative feudalism with the subedars of Haryana saving the Dilli Darbar from a peasant uprising?.#FarmersDilliChalo #Farmers.
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1/15. This week marks the 200th anniversary of the great tradition of Indian journalism – the opposite of the petty one that has ruled our media for 30-40 years. Raja Ram Mohan Roy founded the newspaper Mirat-ul-Akhbar on April 12, 1822. #PressFreedom
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Swami Agnivesh: a fighter who freed thousands of bonded labourers. His health plummeted after a 2018 physical attack in Jharkhand. Oh! the bravery of those assaulting an unarmed 79-year-old Swami in the name of Hinduism.
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1/6. Are those noisy Punjabis at Delhi’s gates “rich farmers?” The average monthly income of a farm household (avg. 5.24 persons) in that state was Rs. 18,059. Or a monthly per capita income of Rs. 3,450. (NSS 70th Round). Story link at end of thread. #FarmersProtests
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1/5. PM Modi has repeatedly told us that a) he will never allow MSP to die and b) he will double farmers incomes by 2022. Great. So what stops him from moving a 5 paragraph Bill cementing those assurances? Unlike the earlier 3, this Bill would pass unanimously. #FarmBill2020.
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1/5. Bhagat Singh. Today is the 113th birth anniversary of the man we celebrate as a martyr, political activist, thinker, revolutionary – and rightly so. Sadly, an element central to his identity – Bhagat Singh the journalist, remains largely unknown.#Bhagat_Singh.
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1/3. India’s most powerful alliance – BJP + lotsa cash + corporate power + half union cabinet + Godi media + pollsters + Election Commission + ED + NIA + CBI + IB + IT Dept + Customs + (fill in blanks) – just came a cropper in Bengal, TN and Kerala.#ElectionResults #Elections2021.
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1/5. Some 713 schoolteachers have died after compulsory duty as officials in UP’s panchayat polls where all protections and distancing protocols were absent. Their unions’ appeals for postponement of the polls were rejected. Story link at end of thread. #COVID19 #Election2021
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1/4. One of media’s most self-romancing cliches: Talking the Truth to Power. It assumes poor old Power is naïve, innocent, doesn’t know the truth. Far more important: talking the truth about power. Corporate media can do neither, but are forever talking. #FarmersProtests #media
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1/5. And so the BJP lost the Faizabad (Ayodhya) Lok Sabha seat. Has Lord Ram fought his last electoral battle for them? Or did he resent being politicized for cheap partisan gain? Or maybe he figured out who the ten-headed monster really was?.#ElectionsResults
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1/6. 𝗙𝗮𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀 (not for the speaker, but countless thousands of others): “Remember, victory in the Mahabharat war came in 18 days. Against Covid it will take 21 days.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi. March 25,2020. (Do add your own favourites). #COVID19India.
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1/5. The Indian Jawan is a Kisan in uniform. And among the lakhs of peasants at Delhi’s gates is this group of 6 war heroes and veterans who have between them won over 50 medals in wars they’ve fought for India. (story link at end of thread).#FarmersProtests #JaiJawanJaiKisan
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1/5. The People’s Archive of Rural India turned 7 today. In just these first 84 months, PARI won 42 awards – one every 59 days on average. Of these, 12 are international awards. And 16 were won for stories done during the lockdown periods. Story link at end of thread.#Anniversary
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6/6. Malkani’s final words: ‘Tipu could certainly have bowed to the British and survived as a prince . But Tipu preferred death to dishonour.’.#Karnataka #TipuSultan.Link:
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1/5. Never mind the entries thrown up on google search, please stop calling Indian languages ‘vernacular.’ There’s a colonial context to the use of the word in the British Raj – from the older Latin origin: tongues of the home-born slave. #britishraj #language #psainath
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7/7. The farmers didn’t just fight for repeal of the laws, they fought for the democratic rights, legal security, and civil liberties of every citizen of India. An inspiration to all those resisting bullying and authoritarian intimidation. #FarmLaws.Link:
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The supreme court asserts that the judiciary is the central pillar of Indian democracy. Gee, thanks for letting me know. I was under this misguided impression that it was The People. #prashantbhushan.
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1/4 Freedom fighter Bhabani Mahato passed away peacefully in her sleep soon after midnight of August 29-30, 2024. She was 106 years old. With her passing, the numbers of India’s freedom fighters are thinner than ever. In 3-5 years, the golden generation will be gone and not a
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The farmers were feeding the hands that beat them.The police were biting the hands that fed them. It was a noble, moral moment. All those langars through local gurdwaras were organised by and for farmers groups.#FarmersProtest #FarmBills.
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7/7. Bhagat Singh Jhuggian is worried about the independence and freedom of the nation that he fought for. Because, he says, those now running the country participated in neither. But, he believes, “the sun will set on this Raj, too.”.#IndependenceDay2021.
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1/5. The farm laws exclude civil court jurisdiction and bar prosecution of officers of central and state governments, and also “any other person in respect of anything” if done “in good faith.” Hint: Any other person = corporations..#Farmers #FarmerBills.
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Please join the Twitter storm on the 28th and 29th. India's farmers are fighting back. Do you bit to help them. #dillichalo #KisanMuktiMarch.
India's agricultural crisis cannot be overlooked anymore. Farmers are fighting back now with a march to parliament on the 29th of Nov to demand their rights. Join theTwitter storm and support the farmers in their struggle. Details below.
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1/5. I am most disturbed to learn from media reports of the appalling developments involving the pontiff of the Shri Murughamath in Chitradurga, Shri Shivamurthy Murugha Sharanaru. He now faces a case and charges under the POCSO and SC/ST act. #MurughaMutt.
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8/8. Nothing indicates that the marriage of the millennium had the enthusiastic approval of ‘most Indians.’ But it certainly won (or purchased) the hearts and pockets of a nauseatingly narcissistic elite. These are not just Nero’s Guests, these are Nero’s Hosts. #ambaniwedding.
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2/7. Prime Minister Modi ‘apologises’ to the nation not for bringing in obnoxious anti-farmer laws but because, he says, he failed to persuade ‘a section of farmers despite best efforts’ to accept them. So which sections of farmers did he persuade?.#FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed
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1/8. With the passing of Ramchandra Sripati Lad (underground name ‘Captain Bhau’) on Feb. 5 – India lost one of her greatest freedom fighters. On June 7, 1943, his Toofan Sena squads looted a British Raj train at Shenoli, Maharashtra. Story link at end of thread. #FreedomFighter
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4/8. ‘But it’s his hard-earned money, made through hard work’ – everyone, capitalism promises us, can be as rich as they, if you work as hard. Really? If hard work makes you a billionaire, every woman in rural India would be one. But yes, a rural household with100 days’ work on.
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5/5. When you have multiple fulltime correspondents covering industry, stock markets, cinema, IPL but not a single fulltime one for labour or farming, you are saying: 75 per cent of the population do not make news. (Except in election year). #FarmersDilliChalo #Farmers #FarmBill.
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4/7. Mr. Modi made seven trips overseas this year alone. But found no time to drive down a few kilometres from his residence to speak to the countless thousands of farmers at Delhi’s gates. Now that would have been a genuine effort at persuasion. #FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed
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2/8. In our decades-old ongoing agrarian crisis, lakhs of weddings in farming communities have collapsed. In one year, Maharashtra officially recorded more than 3 lakh families in just six districts with daughters whose marriages they could not afford. That was a factor in some.
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5/8. Much of Indian billionaire wealth comes from publicly-owned resources either through government leases or contracts, or through privatization of public-owned assets. And with a little bit of help from their friends. With several, the rise in their fortunes neatly matches the.
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1/3. One of India’s very last living freedom fighters, R. Nallakannu, turns 100 years of age today. The CPI veteran was one of the founding members of the farmers’ movement in Tamil Nadu. Nallakannu’s struggles seamlessly integrated farmers’ battles with the anticolonial.
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Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana - the scheme is the scam. It's not about one private corporation, but over a dozen of them benefit in crores of rupees of public money. #Thread.
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3/7. Denying them entry to Delhi, blocking them with trenches, barbed wire and water cannons, converting their camps into little gulags, vilifying them daily – these were the government’s ‘best efforts’ at persuasion? I’d hate to see their worst ones. #FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed
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1/11 N. Sankariah – prominent in my book The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom, was conferred a doctorate on July 15 – his 102nd birthday. Sankariah, imprisoned 15 days before his final exams in 1941, had no BA degree. PARI story link at end of thread. #FreedomFighter
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6/6. Funny. Some of the great names trashing the “rich farmers” on media are people who make more money in a day than an entire farm household of 5 in Punjab or Haryana earns in a month. #FarmersProtests .
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1/6. He was on the streets of Tuticorin at age 9 protesting Bhagat Singh’s execution by the British Raj. At age 100, freedom fighter N. Sankariah remains a revolutionary. PARI published this interview with him on his 99th birthday. Story link at end of thread. #FreedomFighter
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4/5. In 2006, 512 journalists covered Lakme India Fashion Week all 7 days and 125 more did so on daily passes. Only 6 of us from outside Vidarbha spent a full week there at the height of the farm suicides. Clear priorities.#RheaChakraborty #mediatrial #media #SushantSinghRajput.
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6/7. The farmers know theirs is a fantastic victory but realise there’s a long road ahead. The larger agrarian crisis and its issues remain unresolved. Still, their unflinching courage and resistance is an inspiration. #FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed
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7/7. While both arrests reek of revenge, they’re also a reassurance to those in the Sangh Parivar flock upset by the ‘punishment’ of Nupur Sharma: Okay, so we can’t take on our Gulf trading partners. But we can still clobber our minorities at home. #TeestaSetalvad #MohammedZubair.
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3/7. The efforts of Teesta and her team led to 117 perpetrators of the Gujarat riots of 2002 being handed life sentences by trial courts. Including a former MLA and minister. Perhaps we’ll now see the rewriting of those judgements and sentences. #TeestaSetalvad #MohammedZubair.
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3/8. Sure, there’s celebration in some media. You know who India’s biggest media baron is. Those media Mukesh Ambani does not own – he’s likely the biggest advertiser. And this is the era of Editor/ Anchor as Event Manager. There may be dancing in some TV studios, and breathless.
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5/7. The farmers defeated not just the government and corporations, but also thoroughly discredited Big Media. On the farm issue (as on so many others), corporate media functioned as extra power AAA batteries (Amplifying Ambani Adani +). #FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed
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2/3. The best signal of the poll outcomes came after the exit polls when TimesNow and other channels announced they were suspending live coverage of results. They said their conscience dictated they cover Covid-19 instead, the poor lambs. Touching. #ElectionResult #Elections2021.
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2/5. Farm crisis coverage needs field investigation, travel, interviews; studying credit systems, input costs, eco-ruin, state policies. Takes money. Talk TV needs low-cost, high decibel, lame-brained cacophony. Makes money. #RheaChakraborty #mediatrial #media #SushantSinghRajput.
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The major problem in this Covid crisis is not about how soon we can return to normal. For hundreds of millions the normal was the problem. With the pandemic, that normal, always unsustainable, became unbearable. #COVID #pandemic #NewNormal.
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7/8. Anyways, 320 million USD is just 0.27 per cent of Ambani’s wealth of 118 billion dollars. That 118 billion is 7.5 times India’s agriculture budget. And he’d have been a huge labharthi of the farm laws had those not been repealed. He and his fellow 199 Indian billionaires.
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2/7. So all we knew about the Gujarat riots was wrong. Especially about who the victims really were and who the villains. A human rights activist who has stood by and fought for the (real) victims for 20 years now pays the price of her ‘audacity.’.#TeestaSetalvad #MohammedZubair.
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Imagine a #democratic #protest where a million #Farmers, labourers and others march to the capital and compel discussion of the exploding crisis of the countryside in a special three-week session of #Parliament . #chalodelhi .
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4/5. Do a quick check: how many corporate media dailies and TV channels have a fulltime labour or farming correspondent (not people covering just the agriculture ministry)? Compare that with the number of their reporters covering business. #FarmersDilliChalo #Farmers #FarmBill.
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5/5. One giant daily showed rare honesty when it told its upset reporters who wanted to cover the farm suicides, in an internal memo: ‘dying farmers in Vidarbha don’t buy our newspaper or its products. The elites of SOBO do’.#RheaChakraborty #mediatrial #media #SushantSinghRajput.
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2/6. BJP founder-member and foremost RSS journalist K.R. Malkani wrote decades ago: ‘The more I read about Tipu, the more I am impressed with his rich personality.’ His heartfelt praise of Tipu appears in his book ‘India First’ (Ocean Books 2002). #Karnataka #TipuSultan.
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2/6. In Haryana: Farm household avg. 5.9 persons. Avg. monthly income Rs.14,434 or Rs. 2,450 per capita. That’s income from ALL sources: cultivation, livestock, wages/ salaries, non-farm businesses. Gee! Such wealth. What a ball these folks must be having. #FarmersProtests
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4/7. The Pratap Singh Kairon government jailed him for his role in the 1959 struggle against unjust taxes imposed on farmers. They seized and auctioned his buffalo and fodder chopping machine. But a neighbour bought both for Rs. 11 and returned them to him. #IndependenceDay2021
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4/7. We also seem to be rewriting our concepts of justice and democracy. The Supreme Court’s ‘clean chit’ judgement suggests it is an ‘audacity’ for citizens to use the legal process to question leaders or any functionaries of government. #TeestaSetalvad #MohammedZubair.
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Someone please give me the break-up of the Rs. 1 across.Scurrilous malicious allegations.Scandalizing court.Hurting central pillar of democratic state.Harming foundation of democracy.hurting national honour & prestige.use of iron hand.108 sheets of paper. GST.#PrashantBhushan.
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6/7. Even today, jathas going from his tehsil to join the farmers’ protests on Delhi’s borders go first to his home to get his blessings. And he is raising resources for the protesting farmers camped at Shahjahanpur. Full story on PARI in 13 languages. #IndependenceDay2021
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1/7. The number of schoolteachers who died of Covid-19 after compulsory duty in UP’s panchayat polls has risen to 1,621 – 1,181 men and 440 women. And the toll could rise further. Link to story (with full list of those deaths) at end of thread. #COVID19 #Elections2021
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5/5. Bhagat Singh saw the communal riots of his time as being spearheaded by political leaders – and a communalised press. He worried greatly about religious zealots and their media friends twisting and poisoning his profession – journalism. #Bhagat_Singh.
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3/3. You knew then the BJP was losing in West Bengal. Because If these channels ever found a conscience, they’d be busy negotiating the best price for it. It also means they massaged the exit polls they had put out 2 days ago for the rest of us. #ElectionResults #Elections2021.
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2/7. His reaction to being thrashed and thrown out of Government Elementary School, Samundra in Hoshiarpur, Punjab was: ‘Now I’m free to join the anti-British struggle.’ He did. By the time he was 16, the police were more scared of him than he was of them. #IndependenceDay2021
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3/7. This foot-soldier of freedom fought for humanity during Partition which for him was the saddest year ever. He often risked his life to save innocents from frenzied communal mobs. Post-I947 he fought for farmers and workers and still does – at age 93. #IndependenceDay2021
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4/5. A voracious reader, Bhagat Singh during his 716 days in prison, borrowed over 300 books to make notes from - a right he won by hunger strike. Those included 63 Hindi books, 197 English, 28 Urdu, 17 Bengali and 7 in Punjabi.#Bhagat_Singh.
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6/8. There is salivating speculation on whether The Big Fat Wedding and its prequel cost 132 or 156 – or 320 million dollars (Rs. 2,673 crore). Don’t let the suspense kill you, guys – the Ambanis will undoubtedly let us know how much it cost. Not that the Nation Wants to Know,.
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1/3. At age 100, freedom fighter and PARI hero N. Sankariah has been given Tamil Nadu’s newest and top award: 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗴𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗵𝗮𝗿 – for an exemplary and most distinguished Tamil personality. Fittingly, he will receive the award on August 15. #ThagaisalAward
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2/5. Remember the 3 Farm Bills (now laws) that were to ‘liberate’ farmers from the clutches of the evil APMC? Rammed through by the Centre, hailed by media and ‘expert’ economists. Damn! The liberated are biting the hands that never fed them. #FarmersDilliChalo #Farmers #FarmBill.
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5/6. It only affects Punjab-Haryana, say the experts. Funny. When last verified by a committee not appointed by the Supreme Court, both Punjab and Haryana were a part of the Indian Union. You’d think what happens there matters to all of us. #FarmersProtests
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5/7. He was a prime target of Khalistani terrorists between 1984 and 1993. At least one attempt on his life failed because one of the extremists recognised him as a fine human being and refused to kill him. The hit squad turned back 400 metres from his house. #IndependenceDay2021
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43% of 2019 Lok Sabha MPs have criminal cases against them.
The Indian Parliament might as well be a jail. Have a look at these graphics, made by @adityadipankar and me for @PARInetwork. #ModiSarkarDobara #Elections2019 #loksabhaelections. Our source is -
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6/7. Challenging the daily rewriting of truth invites revenge attacks of the kind that Mohammad Zubair of Alt-News suffers today. His arrest is scary – but intended to be so. A message similar to the one sent out with the jailing of Siddiqi Kappan. #TeestaSetalvad #MohammedZubair.
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2/5. Bhagat Singh the journalist wrote in four languages, English, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi. While underground, he learned some Bengali. He even understood a little Persian. All this - achieved by a young man hanged at age 23. Many of us began journalism at that age.#Bhagat_Singh.
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5/6. The BJP, its routed government in Karnataka, and the RSS, obviously remained silent on Malkani’s embarrassing findings and still do. They went ahead two decades later, to whip up a hysterical frenzy, throwing Tipu out of the textbooks. #Karnataka #TipuSultan.
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3/5. The SSR suicide-Rhea arrest coverage is repulsive but it’s neither an aberration nor happening for the first time. Huge crises affecting ordinary people were also ignored during the Sheena Bora case, and earlier too.#RheaChakraborty #mediatrial #media #SushantSinghRajput.
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The agrarian crisis won't be restricted to only the rural for much longer. The pressure will fall in urban India soon enough. Support the farmers' march to parliament tomorrow and dayafter. #DilliChalo #KisanMuktiMarch.
In 2011-12, acc to official data, more than 1/5th of rural agricultural households suffered from acute poverty. #dillichalo.
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3/5. The government then quickly ‘codified’ 29 labour laws into four codes. More media and expert applause. But the ungrateful workers so empowered are on the streets today fully supporting the liberated farmers. Happy Constitution Day, all. #FarmersDilliChalo #Farmers #FarmBill.
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Swami Agnivesh had degrees in law and commerce and a lecturer’s job in a top Kolkata college, but quit to pursue a life of activism. He also quit as Haryana’s education minister in 1979 to continue his fight against bonded labour.
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We need to get down to these measures right now. The government’s ‘package’ is a curious blend of callousness and cluelessness. It’s not just one virus we’re fighting – pandemics are also a ‘package.’ #COVID2019 #Lockdown21 #LockdownWithoutPlan .
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5/7. This riot of rewriting shouldn’t surprise us. Members of this central government have called for replacing the Constitution of India with the Manu Smriti. A political force whose state governments are daily slaughtering school textbooks. #TeestaSetalvad #MohammedZubair.
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7/7. Teachers’ union says: “It is unfortunate that neither the Basic Education Department, nor the government of Uttar Pradesh, has till now expressed any feeling of grief at the deaths of teachers in such a large number.”. .#COVID19 #Elections2021.
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4/6. Malkani’s praise of Tipu followed his inquiry into the Sanjay Khan-starrer serial ‘The Sword of Tipu Sultan’ (Doordarshan 1990) at the request of party leaders. He delved strongly into the subject, reading all the historical accounts he could on Tipu. #Karnataka #TipuSultan.
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3/6. K. R. Malkani was Vice President of BJP from 1991-94. And editor of the RSS weekly Organiser for 35 years, while also editor of its Hindi counterpart Panchjanya. No other RSS man ever climbed such heights. L.K. Advani wrote the foreword to his book. #Karnataka #TipuSultan.
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4/6. Please remember that the government has pledged to double farmers’ incomes by 2022 – 12 months from now. A herculean task. That’s what makes the disruptive interference of the Rihannas and Thunbergs all the more annoying. #FarmersProtests
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7/8. The freedom fighters in this book fought the British, not their fellow Indians. When imprisoned, they did not spend their time whining, whinging, or writing pitiful mercy petitions to the British monarch, promising to be collaborators of the Raj. #IndependenceDay2022.
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4/4. How can the very media whose owners directly profit from the farm laws, and/or from the advertising power of those whose names the farmers are chanting, ever tell you the truth about those laws or much else?.#FarmersProtests #media.
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1/5. At the very moment people need journalism the most, and media are declared an essential service, media owners throw out 1,200 journalists and media workers. And subject thousands more to savage salary cuts. #journalism #PaidMedia #media #MediaMonopoly #Sacked.
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