Anand Teltumbde Not even Manu, that much maligned protagonist of castes also could have imagined the infinite instrumental value castes would assume in governance of globalising India at the hands of the ruling classes. Poor Karl Marx had prophesied in 1845 that with the spread of railway network in India and consequent industrialisation the …
INDIA: Bonded Labour In India
HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL Bonded labour is prohibited in India by law. Though the Constitution directly and indirectly prohibits the practice, vide Articles 21, 23 (1) and 24, a specific law that prohibits the practice, the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act was legislated only in 1976. Despite the statutory prohibition, bonded labour is widely practiced. The …
Forest alert
by Latha Jishnu Saxena panel report on Niyamgiri puts states under watch for forest, tribal rights violations Tribals in Kodigumma village discuss filing of community claims Few committees have been as forthright as the N C Saxena committee on the violation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) by the very authorities which are charged …
CBI: Different strokes for different folks
by Abraham Thomas The CBI’s handling of cases involving Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and former Bihar CM Lalu Prasad has exposed the varied yardsticks adopted by the probe agency in dealing with these political heavyweights.To start with, all three leaders faced Disproportion Asset cases in which the assessment …
Biography of Mahatma Phule
Dr. Y.D. Phadke. This brief Life Sketch of Mahatma Jotirao Phule is written by the noted the scholar Dr.Y.D. Phadke. He is the editor of the ‘Collected Words of Mahatma Phule’ in Marathi. He is also an eminent scholar of Mahatma Phule and the Satyashodhak Movement. JOTIRAO GOVINDRAO PHULE occupies a unique position among the …
Caste Census and Indian Muslims A rejoinder to Abusaleh Shariff : by Khalid Anis Ansari
Khalid Anis Ansari In a recent piece Mr. Abusaleh Shariff (‘Casting the Caste Net’, Indian Express, 23 August 2010) has attempted an imaginative intervention in the debate around the caste census. While he enters the debate both in his ‘professional’ capacity as a renowned economist/demographer (to ‘discuss alternatives for collecting caste data’) and as a ‘communitarian’ …
A childhood journey to Koregaon becomes a nightmare
Waiting for a Visa : by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Foreigners of course know of the existence of untouchability. But not being next door to it, so to say, they are unable to realise how oppressive it is in its actuality. It is difficult for them to understand how it is possible for a few …
Justice, at last
by T.K. RAJALAKSHMI Seven persons have been awarded life imprisonment in the Dulina Dalit lynching case, but the battle for justice may not be over. THE long wait for justice by the families of the five Dalit youth who were lynched on October 15, 2002, at the police post in Dulina village in Jhajjar district …
Neutral agency to study atrocities against Dalits
HINDUSTAN TIMES Following the Dalit ministers’ demand that atrocities against their community be averted, the state government on Monday decided to appoint a neutral agency to recommend measures to check the social evil. In the Cabinet meeting on August 4, Ministers Nitin Raut, Varsha Gaikwad and Ramesh Bagwe (from Congress) and Laxman Dhoble (from the …