As many as 100 girls from Gusai Baliya in Barkagaon block of Hazaribagh district can’t study as the nearest school is about 15km away The primary school at Belamundwar village in Hazaribagh Sadar block has 155 students but no permanent teacher. It needs at least five trained teachers, but is struggling with two para-teachers The primary school at Simgra in Khunti district has only one teacher for 101 students Halwai Tola primary school...

-The Times of India   In what is a first in Andhra Pradesh, 101 workers in Medak district have been awarded unemployment allowance to the tune of Rs 2 lakh for having been denied work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The award is being seen as an assertion of wage earners' rights under the Act as this is the first time that they have earned compensation for not...

Conservation measures have taken away the traditional livelihoods of nomadic tribes in Karnataka. AT a short distance from the world famous monuments at Hampi is the village of Hulihaidar in the fertile region of the “rice bowl of Karnataka” in Gangavathi taluk in Koppal district. Local residents say it was an important town in the Vijayanagara empire (1336-1646 C.E.) and the seat of a local lord. Today it is home to...

The alleged incident of two quarry workers in Tamil Nadu's Villupuram district being forced to swallow faeces draws attention to larger issues. NORMALLY the villages and hamlets in and around Thiruvakkarai in Tamil Nadu's Villupuram district are woken up by the loud noise and vibrations caused by the blasting of rocks and the pounding of boulders with sledge hammers, apart from the rattling sound of tipper lorries transporting stones from 40-odd...

Historians tell us of the colonial era stories of miserable conditions of workers, even bonded labour, in tea plantations of eastern India. However, the situation improved after independence. In the past few decades the tea industry has made steady profits even in worst years of economic downturn. And that is why reports of starvation deaths in tea plantations of Assam are so shocking. An Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) report says that...