-OrissaPost.com Raisuan (Odisha): Despite funds being spent from the District Mineral Foundation (DMF) on development of mineral-bearing areas, people in several villages of tribal-dominated Keonjhar district are still deprived of safe drinking water.  Tribals allege lakhs of rupees are being misappropriated by officials in the name of development. The sorry state of the inhabitants of Sankari village under Bansapal block is a case in point. People belonging to the Bhuyan tribe live...

-The Hindu Hundreds of government schools, especially in tribal-dominated districts, have been shut down over the past year. Elizabeth Kuruvilla reports on the closures, the mushrooming of private schools, and the battles waged by tribal villages to keep state-funded local schools open It’s a little past four in the afternoon, the time when schools ring their closing bells in the Hatsesikhal cluster of Odisha’s tribal-dominated Rayagada district. Just before Sekhal Primary School...

-TheWire.in The Gujarat election results are a wake-up call for the key political parties, as they gear up to draw strategies for the ensuing elections to three states. The years 2018 and 2019 are going to be hectic with elections scheduled for some state assemblies and to  parliament. The issues that confront the citizens are many, ranging from financial to livelihood, farm operations to health and education to rural development. The performance...

-The Asian Age The increase in the income has also halted migration of local people to other states in search of work. Bhubaneswar: Grappling with financial problems because of non-remunerative character of their age-old agricultural practices, villagers living in hilly areas of Odisha’s Gajapati district have suddenly found enough money coming to their pockets by adoption of traditional methods of irrigation. Sourcing water in the Diversion Based Irrigation (DBI) system from the streams...

-Newsclick.in Whenever Dalits asserted themselves, there were severe backlashes. Budget allocations were reduced, important policies meant for upliftment of SCs and STs were scrapped, and discrimination continued. As the years pass under the current regime, life for Dalits gets more difficult. The biggest setback this year for Dalits and Adivasis was the scrapping of the Scheduled Castes Sub Plan (SCSP) and Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) in the Union Budget 2017.   These...