LATEST STORIES
In this edition of Panoscope, we listen to Nepali migrant workers and a family member share their experience of working overseas. This Panoscope is also part of Radio 1812, as Panos Radio South Asia joins hands with radio stations worldwide and celebrates International Migrants Day on the 18th of December. You can also tune into this episode on www.radio1812.net. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we take you to Jammu and Kashmir where industrialists, local politicians and civil society have expressed huge resentment against the Indus Water Treaty signed between India and Pakistan under the observation of the World Bank. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we are in Bagh, 200 kilometers from Pakistans capital Islamabad to follow the rehabilitation work after the devastating October 2005 earthquake. Three long years have passed; but the people affected are still a shaken lot. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we are in India where many state governments have already started industrialized farming of Jatropha, a source of biofuel and have formulated individual state policies as well. However, the terms under which the government declares a tract of land as 'wasteland' and allocates it for the cultivation of Jatropha has become the subject of a huge debate. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we are in Pakistan where Muslim workers in a leather factory fatally beat up a Hindu co-worker for alleged derogatory remarks about the Prophet of Islam. This incident was another casualty on the national media. Except for a few newspapers, media completely ignored or underplayed it. Human rights campaigners believe that this kind of vigilante gets steam from discriminatory laws relating to blasphemy and the resultant intolerance in society. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we are in Nepal, listening to the lives and times of "positive" people, those living with H-I-V and AIDS. The first case of HIV/AIDS was reported in Nepal in 1988. Since then, the country has seen a sharp rise in numbers moving Nepal from being a low-prevalence country to one battling a concentrated epidemic. UNAIDS estimates that Nepal has around 70,000 "positive" people as of December 2007. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Pakistan's only developed port city, Karachi. In an arbitrary move, the government has allocated huge parts of the city's coastal areas and islands to U.A.E based companies for mega city projects. Over a dozen civil society organizations are fighting the move fearing the repercussions including detrimental effects to the environment. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi which is also the melting pot of about 16 million dwellers and is politically known for one ethnic community: the Urdu speaking migrants originally hailing from different Indian states. This section of population is essentially the migrants of not just the 1947 partition of the sub-continent but the 1971 creation of Bangladesh as well. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Tamil Nadu, India where the government has announced plans to set up an exclusive vaccine park in the South Indian state with public-private partnership. The plant is slated to become operational by 2011; the vaccine requirement till then is to be procured from private players. This move towards privatisation may signal the onset of a public health crisis steered by profit-hungry MNCs. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to meet Nepali migrant workers working at a McDonald's outlet. Unlike most migrant workers who arrive here with no jobs or are given difficult jobs in palm plantations, the workers at McDonald's are relatively better off. But they still feel cheated, mostly by agents who brought them to this Southeast Asian country promising them a job at an "American restaurant" and an "American salary". (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to India where the government is all set to invest Rs. 363 crores to promote organic farming in 23 states across the country. Plans are afoot to set up organic food parks and to streamline the agro-infrastructure with modern facilities. But it's too early to predict if the new initiative will tempt marginal farmers to switch to organic. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we travel 254 kilometers southeast from Colombo, Sri Lanka to Bibile in Moneragala District of the Uva Province where the government is promoting a controversial Bibile Sugar Project amid massive protests to take away fertile and protected land, some of which falls under reserve forest area. The government has already decided to transfer 65,000 acres of land to the British firm Booker Tate to cultivate sugarcane and run a sugar factory there. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we discuss the final draft of an HIV/AIDS Bill that is waiting to be cleared by the Indian Parliament. India is home to 2.5 million people affected by HIV/AIDS; this includes nearly 80,000 children below the age of 14, according to the National Aids Control Organisation's figures at the end of 2005. The new legislation is likely to give some respite to thousands of "positive" people, who have lost jobs, been thrown out of homes and refused treatment at hospitals. Their only crime: they are HIV positive. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we examine the politics and science of relocating the petrochemical industry hub, originally proposed for Nandigram, to the Nayachar Island in the Hooghly River. The state government in West Bengal had burnt its fingers badly in trying to forcibly acquire land in Nandigram. The uninhabited island, Nayachar must have seemed the safest alternative for the red-in-the-face Left government. This story is but one example of the desperation of state governments across the political spectrum to lure foreign capital at any cost. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we focus on the escalating attacks on media houses and journalists in Sri Lanka. Intimidation of journalists is not new in Sri Lanka. But current trends are alarming. Journalists disappear without a trace. They are often arrested without charges, abducted or found dead. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope we go to Phulbari, a small hamlet in north Bangladesh where, for the past several years, local residents have been resisting a coal-mining project that threatens to displace thousands of people. The controversy revolves around a clandestine deal between the erstwhile Bangladesh government and a British coal company called Asia Energy. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to India, to track a retail boom, brought upon by its accelerated economic growth and consumerism. The entry of multinational brands has lent color and choice to the consumer, no doubt...! But the grim reality of displacing millions of small, unorganized voiceless vendors and shopkeepers looms large... (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Pakistan where the Polio eradication campaign has been on since 1994. Despite political uncertainty and frequent change in governments, this campaign has remained on track, with the country having immunization rounds against Polio, every six weeks... but, its children are still getting infected by the crippling virus. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Pakistan's capital, Islamabad where the army surrounded the Lal Masjid or the Red Mosque for over a week in July and eventually launched "Operation Silence" to crush the pro-Taliban militants holed up inside the mosque and seminary complex for months. The army claims they killed 75 people... but the number of parents searching for their children, who were all students, make the numbers seem heavily underplayed. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Orissa in India to get behind the popular unrest against the Korean steel giant Pohang Steel Company (POSCO)’s proposal to build India’s largest steel plant. POSCO has already acquired one thousand one hundred and thirty five acres of land in the face of a stiff local opposition. However, the debate over the project’s stated economic gains and its projected social and environmental cost refuses to die down. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Uttar Pradesh in North India, where the Bahujan Samaj Party that came into being to assert the rights of Dalits or "untouchables" of India is in power, led by a 51-year-old woman leader - Mayawati. Mayawati's electoral experiment brings together a hitherto unusual alliance, between Dalits and Brahmins – considered the nadir and the zenith in Hindu caste hierarchy. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to North Chennai in South India, where dumping of obsolete electronic goods from across the world is bringing about an acute environmental crisis. We also hear a worker who is earning his living by extracting metals dangerously from electronic scrap. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Puttalam on the western coast of Sri Lanka, where thousands of Sri Lankan Muslims languish in I-D-P camps after being displaced by years of civil conflict. We'll also hear Jehan Parera of the Colombo based National Peace Council express his views on a negotiated peace settlement in Sri Lanka. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Pakistan where a constitutional crisis which began with President Musharraf's suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Choudhry on March 9 on charges of misconduct has become a struggle for the restoration of democracy in the country. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to the Indian state of West Bengal where thousands of farmers continue to protest forcible acquisition of prime agricultural land for Special Economic Zones or S-E-Zs. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, where we meet Anisa Wahab, one of Afghanistan's best loved actors and radio personalities and a staunch supporter of UNICEF's Advance Afghanistan Campaign. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we have three guests with us in our studio. Deepak Thapa is a Kathmandu-based journalist, Sumitra Manandhar Gurung is an academic turned activist, and Gopal Krishna Siwakoti is a human rights activist. They will discuss Nepal's upcoming Constituent Assembly elections. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Mannar on the western coast of Sri Lanka where local fishermen have expressed concerns on the adverse effects a 152 kilometer long shipping lane called the Sethusamudram Canal will have on their livelihoods. We also hear A. S. Panneerselvan, a journalist, who looks at the missing pieces of the Sethusamudram controversy. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we go to Dhaka - the bustling capital of Bangladesh where thousands of rickshaws, those jauntily decorated three wheelers, jostle for space with cars, pedestrians, trucks, tempos and bicycles. Yet the migrant population that man these vehicles around the city often remain faceless, swelling the ranks of Dhaka’s urban poor. We also hear Mostafa Kamal Majumder, a Dhaka-based journalist, speak about the migration and marginalization of rickshaw wallahs – the men who keep Dhaka on the move. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we listen to a soldier from Nepal's Maoist People's Liberation Army speak of her experience as a legislator in Nepal's interim parliament. We also hear Sanam Anderlini, an expert on the Security Council U-N Resolution Article 1325, speak of how the U-N resolution on Women, Peace, and Security relates to Nepal especially in the context of the ongoing peace process. In this edition, we also hear Prof. Yash Ghai, a constitutional expert with the U-N, stress the importance of having a very representative constituent assembly. (15:00)
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In this edition of Panoscope, we listen to how increasing water scarcity in the region affects lives. In the rugged and mountainous region of Balochistan in southwestern Pakistan, the burden of water, as in other parts of South Asia, falls mainly on women. In another feature, as the demand for water outstrips supply in Nepal's urban capital Kathmandu, some of the city's residents rely on ancient stone taps as a continuous water source. (15:00)