Mahua-based alcoholic beverage, indigenous to India, lacks the intellectual property protection under the ambit of geographical indication. The article explores whether this comes in the way of revenue generation and opens the doors for cultural misappropriation of the beverage by international manufacturers.
The Shudras: Vision for a New Path edited by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd and Karthik Raja Karuppusamy, New Delhi: Vintage (Penguin Random House), 2021; pp 272, ₹699.
Based on a Hollywood film about a member of the Black Panther Party, the author explores the history of deep-rooted racism in law enforcement and the structural and institutional continuities that persist.
The status of the tribal domestic workers in Jharkhand is explored. It is evident that large numbers of tribal women are engaged as domestic workers inside and outside of the state, and the sector provides a large chunk of employment apart from the cultivation and agricultural sector. The data show differential engagement in the sector by age, urban–rural location, gender, and tribe.
Tribals and Dalits in Orissa: Towards a Social History of Exclusion, c 1800–1950 by Biswamoy Pati, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019; pp 248, ₹945.
Whether the “practising Adivasi” or the practitioners of traditional knowledge are subjects of different rationality is examined here. Through a study of the Lepcha traditional practices in the east Himalayas, it is argued that the practising Adivasi or indigenous peoples are indeed presenting empirical sites of “ethico-political articulations,” or “Ecosophy,” a term Félix Guattari uses in The Three Ecologies to advocate a normative theory and a “futuristic” approach. The study affirms that the recalcitrant Adivasis, who, as groups of our times, are presenting us with life-sustaining zones of pristine biodiversity as alternatives to the nature-devouring, deep industrialisation models of the modern state.
Ilina Sen, teacher, author and activist has left behind a rich legacy of work and warmth that will continue to inspire women’s and human rights activists and students
Sen exemplified how grounded struggles for feminist change and rich academic scholarship that centred on working-class and Adivasi women’s experiences could be combined.
The dominant discourse in relation to education of Scheduled Tribes and other so-called weaker sections remains mostly concerned with logistics of providing a package. The inherited colonial dispensation that controls education, its institutions, and governance, is treated as a given absolute. It is to be recognised that not merely education for all, but the democratisation of education lies at the core of justice in education. The struggles for self-determination and self-governance by Adivasis have provided ample legal space to alter the present governance in education to democratise and establish community self-governance in education.
