-NDTV Telangana government had coached children from underprivileged backgrounds, who were students of free government schools. Now they will go to IIT and NIT. Hyderabad: Marginal farmers, labourers, orphans, Dalits and tribals - nearly a hundred children from very underprivileged backgrounds have made Telangana proud this year. With special coaching from free government schools, 27 of them have cracked the entrance examination for the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology. The other...

-The Hindu While sanitation schemes in India date back to the British Raj, Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) is the latest and by far most ambitious iteration. Launched by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the end of 2014, the Rs.9,000-crore scheme aims to achieve an Open Defecation-Free (ODF) India by constructing 12 million rural household toilets across the country before October 2, 2019 — to coincide with Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birthday. But...

-TheWire.in After the government cancelled certain cesses that were meant for labourers’ welfare in preparation for the GST, activists suspect that many such moves may be around the corner. Assaults on the hard-earned rights of several categories of workers have been on the rise in recent times, evidenced by the cancellation of cesses meant to be utilised for workers’ social security. If left unchecked, such changes can lead to much bigger losses...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...

-Scroll.in Errors in linking Aadhaar to bank accounts under MNGREGA has meant many workers are going unpaid. It is easy to wake a person who is sleeping, but difficult to wake someone pretending to be asleep. This aphorism rings true for several decisions of the Modi government. One such example is the manner in which the government has pushed the unique identity project, despite several Supreme Court orders stating that the Aadhaar...