-The Hindu The problem with the SC/ST Act is the failure of the criminal justice system to recognise its own casteist biases For India’s Dalits and adivasis, May 1 this year was a ‘May Day’ in more ways than one. It was May Day, the day to commemorate the labour movement (the vast majority of them do belong to the working classes), and also ‘mayday’ in the maritime sense, an occasion to...
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'Disciplined, democratic and dignified': P Sainath on the path shown to us by the Kisan Long March
-Scroll.in The Kisan Long March will leave an enduring mark, the journalist writes in the preface to a new book that documents the historic struggle. Weeks after the Long March, the idea and image still lingers – of 40,000 people walking over 200-km, the last 10-15 km in darkness and silence (as silent as it is possible for such a multitude to be). Those farmers and landless peasants walked into Mumbai,...
More »States as policy labs for farming -Rajeev Gowda
-The New Indian Express Something remarkable happened when the farmers came marching to Mumbai recently. Instead of greeting them with hostility, Mumbaikars welcomed them with affection, food and water. This change in attitude was triggered by the farmers’ extraordinary discipline and their efforts to ensure minimal disruption to the Mumbaikars’ routines. Even hard-boiled journalists acknowledged, for a brief moment, urbanites had realised our farmers and adivasis were indeed facing difficult times. The...
More »Two SC/ST courts: 1,450 pending cases -Shalini Nair, Satish Jha & Maulshree Seth
-The Indian Express Of 700-odd districts, merely 194 have the recommended exclusive courts for SC/ST Act cases. The Sunday Express travels to two such courts — one in Ahmedabad, set up after Una, and the other in Banda, a district with a high number of cases — to find a familiar story Over 1.44 lakh cases of atrocities against Scheduled Castes and 23,408 cases of atrocities against Scheduled Tribes came for trial...
More »Anti-forest, anti-forest dweller -Chitrangada Choudhury
-The Hindu The Compensatory Afforestation Fund is a deeply flawed and unjust mechanism Last month, Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Mahesh Sharma informed Parliament that his Ministry has collected over ?50,000 crore in a Central compensatory afforestation fund (CAF). This money is to be used though the Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Act, 2016 or CAF, a purported mechanism to offset forest loss. Before issuing forest clearances to a...
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