Daily Brief: Assam floods: What turned a safe village into a disaster zone?

Hello, I’m Jaya. We’re starting today’s edition with our ground report asking whether illegal mining played a role in turning a village in Assam into a disaster zone during this year’s floods. Further down: protests in Delhi over caste-based quotas, Rahul Gandhi’s protest after a police station allegedly refused to file an FIR for a student injured by pellets, and a look at how India’s ethanol push could make fuel more expensive for its poorest. Also: Dalit life in Punjabi literature, Tahmima Anam’s new novel set in a floating brothel in Bangladesh, and a review of Pyaar Prema Kalyanam.

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In July, villages in Upper Assam that had never seen a flood before went under water.

Though the police had given permission for the event to be held at Ramlila Maidan, protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar in the heart of the capital.

The Congress leader had earlier said that the student had filed a complaint on August 14, but the police had refused to file a case.

Gains of reducing vehicular emissions and fuel imports are undercut by the diversion of food resources, the toll on human bodies and cost of vehicle repairs.

In this anthology, ‘gangrene’ is not merely the decay of body tissue but also a metaphor for the slow corrosion of a social world shaped by caste.

The women’s livelihoods, precarious as they are, are jeopardised multifold by the onslaught of climate disasters.

Elan’s Tamil film, starring him alongside Saanve Megghna, is out on Netflix.

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