-The Telegraph Ahmedabad: Jignesh Mewani, 35, had a pleasant surprise when he returned home on Monday evening. A group of neighbours in the predominantly middle-class Dalit locality of Chwalnagar in Ahmedabad were waiting for him with flowers, near a small stage they had erected to felicitate their newfound "hero". The previous evening and through the day, they had watched the young Dalit activist on TV and read about him in newspapers, awestruck at...

-The Hindu Business Line The PMUY scheme, under which the poor get subsidised LPG connection, addresses an urgent need. At the same time, it can turn out to be a political masterstroke for the BJP, write Richa Mishra and Debabrata Das The kitchen has always played an important role in Indian politics. Leaders across political parties have cooked their electoral fortunes with the kitchen as the integral ingredient. While some distributed highly...

-The Hindu Police officials who have worked for years cracking cases related to the Bawariyas say their modus operandi is similar to this case. The Bulandshahr gang rape has once again turned the spotlight on the nomadic tribe of Bawariyas. The socio-economic history of the tribe reveals how their sustained alienation from the rest of the population forced generations to turn into criminals. The Bawariyas are natives of Rajasthan and have now spread...

-Frontline A noteworthy study that provides much-needed insights into the nature and severity of the farm crisis in Punjab. There have been many studies on agrarian distress and farmer suicides in different parts of India in the last decade, including in Punjab. Most of the studies focus on a profile of the victims, mostly landowning farmers, and reasons thereof, with a sample of such farmers. In this context, this book makes a...

-BBC Four years ago, a group of upper-Caste men arrived at Mehul Vinodbhai Kabira's modest two-room home in Gujarat and threatened to burn it down. Bhayla is a nondescript village of around 450 low slung brick-and-cement homes straddling a highway dotted by pharmaceutical, engineering and bio-tech factories. Most of the homes in this dense village are owned by land-owning upper Castes, but around 70 belong to Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) like Mr...