Siddharth Vardarajan: The Freedom of the Press and the Pandemic

A Solidarity across Distances Lecture

Join us for a Lecture and Conversation with: Siddharth Varadarajan (Founding Editor of The Wire) on Sunday, May 24, 11 AM EDT/8 AM PDT/8:30 PM IST

Lecture will be uploaded soon!

Siddharth Vardarajan
Siddharth Vardarajan, Founding Editor of The Wire

Siddharth Varadarajan is the Founding Editor of The Wire, a leading Indian non-profit digital news portal, and former editor of The Hindu. He has won many awards for his journalism, both national and international, including the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize Silver Medal, the Ramnath Goenka Award, the Shorenstein award for outstanding reporting and for significant contributions to promoting freedom of the press, and most recently, the prestigious Deutsche Welle Freedom of Speech Award for courageous journalism in the face of repression. He has also edited Gujarat: The Making of a Tragedy and Nonalignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the 21st Century

Vijay Prashad: CoronaShock: How the Socialistic Part of the World is Dealing with the Global Pandemic

A Solidarity Across Distances Lecture

A Lecture by and Conversation with Vijay Prashad, (Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.) on Sunday, May 10, 11 am EDT/8 am PDT/8:30 PM IST

Vijay Prashad, Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research is the Chief Editor of LeftWord Books and the Chief Correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the author of several acclaimed books. His latest book, Washington Bullets has its preface written by Evo Morales, president of Bolivia.

Kavita Krishnan: Covid-19 In India: Building Solidarity, Fighting Untouchability

A Solidarity across Distances Lecture

Kavita Krishnan is a lifelong activist for social, political, and economic justice. She is a member of the politburo of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), and the editor of its monthly publication, Liberation. She is the author of Fearless Freedom, a book that promotes gender equality, political and economic freedom as well as personal freedoms.

Click for relevant links provided by the speaker

Dr Abhay Shukla: COVID-19 and Public Health in India

A lecture by and conversation with Dr Abhay Shukla, M.D. Jan Swasthya Abhiyan/People’s Health Movement.

Dr Abhay Shukla

Dr Abhay Shukla is a public health physician, who has been working on health issues in collaboration with people’s movements and grassroots NGOs in Western India for over two decades. He is one of the national convenors of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (People’s Health Movement – India) and was centrally involved in the organization of the National Right to Health Care campaign during 2003-04. Dr Shukla has co-edited and authored the books ‘Review of Health Care in India’, ‘Report on Health Inequities in Maharashtra’, ‘Health System in India – Crisis and Alternatives’ and ‘The Rights Approach to Health and Health Care’. He’s also the co-author with Dr Arun Gadre of the popular book ‘Dissenting Diagnosis’ published by Penguin. Dr Shukla’s recent opinion piece, “We must give the highest priority to strengthening the public health system,” appeared in the Indian Express.

P. Sainath: Rural Distress in India & the Rise of Authoritarianism in the Times of COVID-19

A Solidarity Across Distances Inaugural Lecture

Saturday, April 4, 11am EDT/8am PDT/8:30PM IST

P. Sainath, the renowned journalist and founder editor of “People’s Archive of Rural India,” delivers our inaugural lecture. His recent critical article, “What we should do about COVID-19” on the Indian government’s relief package for the poor is a must-read. As he wrote in it, “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.’ Of which economic distress can be a self-inflicted or self-aggravated part – driving us from calamity to catastrophe.”

Palagummi Sainath has written on social & economic inequality, rural affairs, poverty, and the impact of globalization in India. His path-breaking series on rural poverty brought to the forefront the alarming numbers of farmers’ suicides in the wake of neoliberal policies in India. He is a senior fellow for Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Since late 2011 he has been working on People’s Archive of Rural India PARI. In June 2011, Sainath was conferred an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree (DLitt) by the University of Alberta, the university’s highest honor. He received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2007 in the category of Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts.

Watch the recorded lecture. Also, please visit the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) for a wealth of information and stories