Policy

INDIA: Bonded Labour In India

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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 …

Policy

Forest alert

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 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 …

Features

CBI: Different strokes for different folks

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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 …

Features

Caste Census and Indian Muslims A rejoinder to Abusaleh Shariff : by Khalid Anis Ansari

caste census

  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’ …

Atrocities

Justice, at last

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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 …