-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...

-Hindustan Times In the index released on Wednesday, India was ranked just three places above Pakistan and was one notch below violence-torn Palestine. India slipped three places in the 2017 world press freedom rankings to 136th among 180 countries, the dismal performance blamed on “Modi’s nationalism” and growing “self-censorship” in the mainstream media. In the index released on Wednesday, India was ranked just three places above Pakistan and was one notch below violence-torn...

-Scroll.in The Five Year plan is gone, several long- and short-term plans are in, but the government is still mapping growth in a supposedly market economy. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the dismantling of the more than six-decades-old Planning Commission in his Independence Day speech on August 15, 2014, it seemed that India was at last formally breaking with the notion of planning, a socialist recipe for the anarchic market...

-The Indian Express In some states like Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the increase in daily wages under MGNREGA from April 1 is just Re 1. IN THE lowest wage hike under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme, the Centre has increased wages by an average of just 2.7 per cent this financial year. In some states like Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the increase in daily...

-Hindustan Times The animating impulse of Indian politics, pundits of all stripes insist, is youthful aspiration: fearless young people throwing off the shackles of caste and class to Whatsapp their way to what the Prime Minister likes to call “vikas”. Parties like the Bharatiya Janta Party understand this, the argument goes, and are handsomely rewarded; the opposition doesn’t, and is doomed to failure. But a recent CSDS-KAS survey paints a rather different picture:...