-The Hindu Refusal by Dalits to work as agricultural labour and to perform menial duties plus their relative economic improvement have made them the targets of caste violence In the recent violence against the Dalits in Dharmapuri district in Tamil Nadu, about 300 of their houses were burnt down and other properties destroyed by the Vanniars, a numerically strong intermediate caste, sections of whom have been economically stagnant. The immediate cause for...

-The Times of India With violence against Indian women on the rise, the debate over feminist politics and its relevance has acquired new importance. Academic Nivedita Menon has researched this in Seeing Like A Feminist. Speaking with Amrita Nandy, Menon discussed the role and energy of feminism today, how rape and dress are analysed by convention versus feminism — and how feminism eventually liberates women, even from being feminists: * You write...

-The Economist Growing inequality is one of the biggest social, economic and political challenges of our time. But it is not inevitable, says Zanny Minton Beddoes IN 1889, AT the height of America’s first Gilded Age, George Vanderbilt II, grandson of the original railway magnate, set out to build a country estate in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. He hired the most prominent architect of the time, toured the chateaux...

-The Economist A new form of radical centrist politics is needed to tackle inequality without hurting economic growth BY THE end of the 19th century, the first age of globalisation and a spate of new inventions had transformed the world economy. But the “Gilded Age” was also a famously unequal one, with America’s robber barons and Europe’s “Downton Abbey” classes amassing huge wealth: the concept of “conspicuous consumption” dates back to 1899....

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Contrary to MNS chief Raj Thackeray's ongoing tirade, migrants to cities like Mumbai are not 'outsiders' from other states. Nearly 70% of them come from rural or urban areas within Maharashtra itself, reveals an analysis of data from the National Sample Survey Organization's (NSSO) 64th round. For every migrant coming to a city in Maharashtra from the urban areas of other states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh...