Over 500 people under the banner of All Adivasi Students' Association of Assam (Aasaa) staged a four-hour dharna in the Lastgate area of Dispur on Thursday seeking an immediate halt to illegal eviction in the Lungsung forest area of Kokrajhar district. Shouting slogans like "stop illegal eviction in Lungsung" and "give us justice", the protesters alleged that the Congress-led government in the state has deprived them of the basic needs....

Even though the Central Government agreed to link the wages paid under MG-NREGA to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL), it shied away from paying statutory minimum wages in various states of India. Their logic for this: Lack of clarity on who will bear the extra financial burden—the Centre or the states? A letter from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to UPA and NAC Chairperson Sonia Gandhi dated 31...

There is a new “plan” for the scheduled tribes, but the Adivasis themselves will have no say. Alienation from the forest and its resources, alienation from cultivable land and alienation from the State underlie the anger of the Adivasis in India’s heartland. This is not a new or startling observation. Adivasi mass organisations, the more sensitive administrators, political organisations with their ears to the ground and scholars who have studied India’s...

An eight-year-old tribal girl was allegedly branded with iron rods several times by a hostel superintendent in Madhya Pradesh's Shahdol district, officials said Wednesday. Shushila, a Class 3 student, was studying at Adivasi Kanya Ashram in Shahdol and living in the school hostel. The latest incident reportedly took place Jan 4 when hostel superintendent Anita Sant took Shushila from her hostel room to her office and subjected her to the torture. 'At 8...

A Supreme Court judgment projects the historical thesis that India is largely a country of old immigrants and that pre-Dravidian aborigines, ancestors of the present Adivasis, rather than Dravidians, were the original inhabitants of India. If North America is predominantly made up of new immigrants, India is largely a country of old immigrants, which explains its tremendous diversity. It follows that tolerance and equal respect for all communities and sects are...