-The Hindu Asara leaders say the media has not reported all decisions such as ban on dowry & compulsory schooling The leaders of the Samaj Sudhar Sabha in Asara village here, who recently ordered women to stop using mobile phones, have claimed that they had never imposed any “blanket ban” and only restrained them from using mobile phones while stepping out of their homes. However, the Sabha members did not backtrack on...

To replace ‘Dalit’ with ‘SC’, as the Thorat panel recommends, is to be inaccurate A commission led by S.K. Thorat, and charged with reviewing NCERT political science textbooks in the wake of the cartoon controversy, has singled out a specific word in the text for removal. All instances of the word “Dalit”, it is recommended, should be replaced with “Scheduled Caste” (SC). The blogosphere is rife with speculation on the motivation...

-The Hindustan Times The Punjab government on Wednesday hammered out a compromise in a village between upper caste landlords and Dalit labourers who endured a month-long social boycott and loss of work for demanding “just” wages. But the truce — on paper — at Maha Singh Wala village in southern Punjab’s Sangrur district, 142 km from Chandigarh, appeared unsteady to Dalits as well as the landlords who had enforced the social...

-The Hindustan Times Dalits of Maha Singh Wala village in Moonak subdivision of Sangrur district have been rendered jobless due to their social boycott by upper-caste landlords. Following a dispute over daily wages, a kangaroo court of village landlords had issued the diktat a month ago. All Dalits working as farm labourers or domestic help have been sacked. The supply of milk and other essential commodities has been disrupted, forcing them to...

Census 2011 data bring into the open Maharashtra’s terrible record in sex-selective abortions. In early June, Vijaymala Patekar, a mother of four girls, haemorrhaged to death at a hospital in Parli, Beed district, Maharashtra. She was reportedly in her second trimester of pregnancy. Her family had allegedly forced her to abort the foetus when they learnt it was a girl child. Sudam Munde, the doctor who performed the procedure, fled Parli but...