In 2005, when the Labour Party decided to implement the National Identity Project (NIP) in the UK, it drew severe criticism from many quarters, including the Tories, who later scrapped the NIP after coming to power. A report by the London School of Economics (LSE), which stated the project is “unsafe in law” and should be regarded as a “potential danger to public interest”, was instrumental in buttressing the arguments...
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Justice for marginalised a neccessity to keep radicals away
-The Economic Times Last week's acquittal by the Patna High Court of all the accused in the Bathani Tola massacre of 1996 - in which 21 Dalits, including women and infants, were killed by members of an upper-caste/landlord militia called the Ranvir Sena, in this area of central Bihar - is shocking testimony to the ineptness, and worse, of the police and the administration in prosecuting the guilty. Given the fact that...
More »NREGA: Wages are often denied or delayed, with corruption rife-Inayat Sabhikhi
-The Economic Times Shibu Joseph ( Why I am Quitting my Job, ET, March 29) suggests, tongue-in-cheek, that he should quit the drudgery of corporate life and, instead, enjoy the "freebies" given to the aam aadmi, like the right to work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). I am not going to write on behalf of the crores of people who work in this programme, because I am...
More »A Song that will be sung-Saroj Giri
Anand Patwardhan’s paean to Dalits, that took 14 years to compose, probes even as it praises, says Saroj Giri THERE IS an entrenched tendency to represent Dalits fighting for rights and reservations as just (another) competitive bloc vying for self-interest and power. It leads to a pernicious inversion: ‘Dalit rights’ dividing the nation along caste lines. Victim as perpetrator! Anand Patwardhan’s film Jai Bhim Comrade takes us beyond the grid of...
More »Anti-scavenging law only on paper-Ananya Sengupta
Not a single case has been registered under a 19-year-old law that prohibits hiring of manual scavengers and building dry latrines. The revelations come weeks after the latest census data showed 25 lakh households across the country depend on manual scavengers to remove night soil from latrines. Union social justice minister Mukul Wasnik conceded implementing the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrine (Prohibition) Act, 1993, had been “weak”. “The implementation...
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