-Down to Earth Life of a Dongria Kondh tribal offers insights on Indian government’s reckless interventions into the lives of indigenous people When 30-year-old Lakshman Huika returned to his village Manda of Munikhol Panchayat in Muniguda block of Rayagada district in Odisha, he had already seen the life in big cities like Bengaluru and Mumbai. Manda lies deep inside Niyamgiri Hills and is accessible only by foot—at least three hours walk from the...

-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...

-The New Indian Express According to education experts, better awareness and exposure is the reason why Kerala is doing better when it comes to pre-primary, primary, secondary and higher secondary education Kerala is going great guns when it comes to education when compared to the rest of the country. The fact was proven by the Annual Status of Education Report (2018) which was published in January. The study, which covered 596 districts,...

-News18.com Acclaimed journalist and Founder-Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India, P Sainath attributes the existential crisis confronting India’s agrarian society to macro-economic policies set in motion 25 years ago. Talking to Anuradha SenGupta, Sainath makes a case for state intervention in agriculture and says the Modi government, with its shifting positions and policies like demonetisation has only aggravated the assault on agrarian livelihoods. Dismissing the buzz about imminent new initiatives...

-Livemint.com With barely a few months to go for 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the question across political party lines is: what can really be done now, and quickly? New Delhi: When residents gather around the fire on foggy winter evenings in Rampura, a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district, the conversation often veers toward the declining fortunes in agriculture. Take 27-year-old Pushpendra Singh, who completed his master’s degree in commerce in 2016,...