-TheWire.in Aadhaar and its many connotations have grown to be among the most burning issues on the Indian fore today, that every citizen aware of their rights should be taking note of. New Delhi: With the leak of 130 million Aadhaar numbers recently coming to light, several activists, lawyers and ordinary citizens are up in arms about what is increasingly being viewed as a government surveillance system. Keeping this in mind, on...

-Scroll.in Those who buy and sell milch cows and oxen for farm work say cow vigilantes have made it impossible for them to conduct their business. Cow vigilantism has been portrayed as a blowback against the Muslim community’s insistence on consuming beef, unmindful of the fact that slaughtering cows hurts Hindus who worship the animal. This depiction has framed the cow as an incendiary issue between Hindus and Muslims, an irreconcilable...

-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...

-Scroll.in Suranga is a horizontal tunnel-like well excavated in a hillside. Even as Kerala reels under severe drought, Gangadhar Rao never misses a day to irrigate thousands of areca nut trees, coconut trees and pepper plants on his 30 acres of farmland. Rao is a farmer from Bedadka Panchayath in Kerala’s northernmost district of Kasaragod and depends on Suranga for all his water needs — irrigation and domestic — round the year. Suranga is...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Peasants from Haryana's Nuh region converged in the capital today to not only demand justice for Pehlu Khan - the latest victim of cow vigilantism - but also drive home the point that cattle trade was a matter of livelihood. The mobilisation was part of the Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan and brought on the platform leaders of various parties, like the Janata Dal United, NCP, CPI and the CPM-L. All...