 Hello and welcome to Dispatches from India where we look at key news developments from across the country. We start out with our News This Week segment where we bring you key news developments often not covered by the corporate media but which reflect what is happening in India. Our first story has to do with Afghanistan but is from right here, the national capital of India, Delhi. The eyes of the world are on Afghanistan after the quick takeover by the Taliban. There are innumerable questions about its future, the human rights situation and what will be the status of women and minorities. Most analysts have pointed out that India has suffered a strategic blow with the Taliban takeover as it is not really established in its ties with them. The Taliban are also backed by Pakistan which is likely to reduce India's maneuvering ability in Afghanistan. Indians are being evacuated from the country and there have been some reports that the Taliban stopped some Indians from returning. Meanwhile, Afghan refugees who are in India are deeply disturbed about the situation back home and feel that there is little chance of them ever returning back to their country. Newsweek spoke to some of them in Delhi. After the Taliban seized Afghanistan, the Afghan refugees are now living in Delhi, their homes, their country. They have left the hope of returning home. We are anticipating that it was meant to take place. So we are talking that it could have taken place. Until I came to Afghanistan, my work was very good. My private business. In 2013, the American people started going to Afghanistan. All the work in Afghanistan was shut down. I myself lost millions of rupees. Now that the Taliban have captured it, it is not at all in my heart that I am going back. It is in my heart that I am going back. Because the Taliban came to Afghanistan 5 years ago, 4 or 5 years ago. They have put people in trouble. Now the Taliban is the Taliban. The Taliban claims that it has changed. And this time it will take a progressive step. The Taliban has been told at the press conference that they will give women the rights and freedom under the Sharia law. They said that women will be able to work in the health sector and schools. We came here because of the family. Our family and children cannot go to school in Afghanistan. They cannot work. If you have money, you cannot take it. If you have children, you cannot take it. In this system, my wife was martyred. She asked for $50,000. She made a mistake. She asked for $5,000. She asked for $10,000. She asked for $50,000. I was in England. In 2012, my wife was martyred at 3 o'clock. She was martyred at 3 o'clock. She was martyred at 3 o'clock. She was martyred at the cost of money. The Afghan refugees of Delhi are eager to know about their families. They are worried that they will be able to see their families again. Our next story is from the state of Tamil Nadu where disabled people organised and held up protests recently on the withdrawal of facilities and special trains. Many of these trains were introduced during the pandemic and disability rights activists say that concessions provided to them in regular trains were removed, leading to greater difficulties for them, both in terms of access and financially. Here is a report of the protests and the reasons for it. Tamil Nadu Association for the Rights of All Types of Different Cable and Care Give Us, Tara Tech, has conducted a statewide protest that is August 11 across Tamil Nadu. The protest has been conducted over 72 centres in Tamil Nadu against the victimisation and facilities curtailed by the railways and the union governments. For the last one and a half years, that is from March 2020, the COVID pandemic has started and the invoke of the lockdown. See, many trains running across the state and all over the country has been running in the name of special trains. After the invoke of the lockdown during the pandemic, COVID pandemic, the facilities, the concessions already given by the government and the union railway ministry and the government has been stopped and the fare, the folded two times or three times, the already the concessional fare also, the concessional facilities has been refused and the fare has been folded twice or twice and people like disabled senior citizens and the children has really troubled to travel and their movement has been restricted. Almost all the important railway stations, the lifts and escalators has been halted and boarded itself that it is an out of order. So the facilities which has been withdrawn and curtailed and it has been stopped to the passengers and commuters which was earlier enjoyed by the passengers and the travellers. The Tamil Nadu association for the rights of all types of differently abled and caregivers directed a statement protest against the union railway ministry to withdraw the names of the special trains and we demand the railway department to run the trains as it was earlier before the lockdown. We now move to our infocus section where we take a deeper look at the issues Indians are talking about. August 15th was India's independence day. On 1947 after a prolonged freedom struggle the British colonizers were forced to leave the country on this day. India's independence was a historic moment and inspired many anti-colonial movements across the world. However it also came with immense pain as the country was split into India and Pakistan and millions became refugees and there was large scale migration, death and despair. As India's in its 75th year of independence there have been many analysis about the direction the country has taken. While India has remained a democracy and has seen many achievements the questions remain as to whether the promise of independence has been fulfilled for a majority of its people especially the poor. On this issue we first bring you a discussion between NewsClicks editor-in-chief Praveer Purkayashta and economist Prabhak Patnaik on India's economy and the approach of the current government during the pandemic. Mr Modi seems to have promised hundred trillion rupees investment on energy and renewable energy doing away with various shortages as well as coal-based energy at least large amounts. How do you take this promise of next 25 years compared to what we are doing at the moment? The point is that the government's entire thinking of investment on the economy is I believe incorrect. The government believes that it has to make an investment out of the resources it has because it cannot spend beyond its means in quotes and the means are limited because it is not willing to tax the rich. Now it's for this reason that you find that the government that the Prime Minister has been making promises for instance about infrastructure investment he has been making promises for the last three Independence Day speeches. During the last three Independence Day speeches he has been making the same promise but nothing has come off it. So you know these are simply things which he promises but nothing actually comes off it and nothing is I believe going to come off even his latest promise. And this is for this reason that during the pandemic almost every other country certainly every other country in the first world was making transfer payments universal transfer payments to all its citizens during the period of lockdown and even afterwards including even Donald Trump in the United States India is one of the few countries that made absolutely no such payments. There were some targeted groups to whom some pittance was given but there was no universal payments as indeed was the case with all other countries. India's transfers to the poor have been most negative. Now again it's the same thinking namely if we cannot augment our resources then we cannot spend. It's exactly like the fact that we have a certain limited budget and we have to stick to that budget and it is that thinking which is wrong economically and it has a disastrous consequence. At the moment also we have an extra burden on the people to COVID-19 we have really a huge loss of jobs we have seen the poverty figures grow up significantly the weakest section in society have born the major brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. So absolutely in fact many people economists, civil society organizations, political parties have been demanding that it is not only for the benefit of the poor but even for a revival of the economy the government must hand over purchasing power to the people through an income transfer scheme. You see because during the pandemic because the government did not hand over any such purchasing power unlike in other countries people got into debt and when they got into debt they have to now even if you provide them with income they have to repay that debt. Therefore they would not be able to spend as much therefore the multiplier value of the incomes they get is extremely limited. So even if you have a revival of the economy that revival would be still born that revival would in fact beat around and that's why everybody has been saying that look you must hand over purchasing power to the people so that over and above anything that they may get by way of their income they must be. So the whole argument that look now the lockdown is over now that the pandemic is over now that people are going to get their jobs back because the economy is going to automatically revive let us actually not talk anymore in terms of transfers to them that entire argument is completely wrong because that would mean that even if people get their incomes there would be a still born recovery. The right-wing Bhartya Janta Party has been in power since 2014 and has brought about quite a few changes to Indian society with its emphasis on Hindu nationalist politics. This is often clashed to the secularism that is a hallmark of the freedom struggle. Eminent journalist Prem Shankar Jha talks about his view of the future of the country while in conversation with senior journalist Paranjay Guha Thakurtha. I am profoundly disappointed and I would say I am close to despairing for the future of our country. The occasion is the 75th anniversary of India's independence. Why are you so despondent? I mean let me divide this question into two parts. What do you think is likely to happen when the next general elections take almost three years away? We are looking at April, May of 2024. That's the near term so to say and when you look ahead beyond 2024, I mean are you as despondent? Do you remain as pessimistic? Do you think the future of this country we describe ourselves as the world's largest democracies is very, very bleak? Well, first let me just slightly elaborate what I said earlier. My despair on the economy, my despair is not on the people of India. On the contrary, I see a kind of flowering of an intelligentsia which I think there are very few countries in the world that have and it's happening because the intelligentsia is feeling threatened by what is happening in the government today. That is one. Second, the degree of innovativeness in small industry, in farmers, I've been studying the farm problem very closely for the last nine months because what has happened and there are many solutions and the farmers have been able to find some of them themselves without Mr Modi's help. But agriculture has been in a crisis precisely because farmers are so phenomenally successful in the past. We have a crisis of massive overproduction in just about everything which is why you can't suddenly wipe out all market protections for the producers and say we're going to create a free market because in a free market of surplus, the producers prices will be driven down into the ground and they will die one by one. So I think that the people of India will come to their senses and I see that and they will join together either to bring the BJP RSS to its senses or to vote at an opposition coalition into power. There is a realization that issues now matter, that India's future matters. It is being promoted, it has been created precisely by that intelligence you were talking about. You look at the Twitter and what's happened and so on and look at the alternate press and see what's happening. Our next story is about the confluence of people's struggles when two iconic movements met. The Narmada Baccha Van Dolan or the same Narmada movement turned 37 years old recently. It is a movement organised by tribal communities and farmers against dam projects on the Narmada river which passes through central India. The protesters feared large-scale displacement and destruction of the habitat in the region and their movement became iconic as one of the leading environmental struggles of India in the 90s and the 2000s. While the Sardarsarovar Dam project which is the focus of the protests finally was inaugurated in 2017, the movement remained a milestone in India's history of environmentalism. In order to mark the anniversary of the movement, a people's assembly was held recently. Among the key participants were leaders of the ongoing struggle against the three controversial farm laws. Now farmers say that these laws will reduce the prices they get and increase the corporate total agriculture. Many drew connection between the Narmada struggle and the farmers protest which has been going on since November 2020. We bring you the sights and sounds of this people's assembly which took place in the state of Maghya Pradesh. It is the right of the people to live on the land of the forest and to live here for the years to come. The ties that are being made on the Narmada river are being brought down by the people here. The farmers are being brought down here. Their villages are being brought down as well. There is still a lot of work to be done on the name of the farmer. The farmers will be 36 years old. So we will be 36 years old here. The history of the farmers is being brought down. What do you see in the future? The government has also spoken. The Supreme Court has also kept it as a whole. What is the end of it? Will the people of this country win? What will be the end of it? Will this society end? Will the government survive? Will these governments have to give laws? Will the government survive? Will the people of this country survive? Will the government survive? The farmers are talking about the farming. All the farmers are getting employment from the beggars. They are facing the same situation in this country. If these people work for employment, then there will be more employment. Today, in Varwani, we are celebrating the birth of Narmada Bajawad Noland, which is the birthplace of a farmer. It is one of the most famous farmers in the history of Narmada Bajawad Noland. In this country, there is a new source of income for farmers. There is a new business in Narmada Bajawad. And there is a new climate to fight against it. That is why we are celebrating Narmada Bajawad. And now, there is no difference between farmers and farmers. Those who are passing the law will be shut down. And they will have to listen to the voice of the people of the country.