-The Hindu dalit rights groups in Bantwal attempted to stop the official celebration of Ambedkar Jayanti on Saturday citing the Government's “failure” to take action to fulfil its constitutional mandate of uplifting the conditions of the poor. Eye-witnesses said the groups initially requested the officials and guests assembled not to conduct the proceedings as planned. When they decided to go ahead ignoring the warnings, the dalits reportedly took away the portrait of...

54 children eligible for primary schooling from these families prefer private schools Across the country, doors of even private schools are set to open for the weaker sections, thanks to the Right to Education Act, but here is a government primary school run by a local body in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu that does not have a single dalit student. Even though there are dalit communities in areas such as Pachayankadu...

The media's failure to recruit dalits is a betrayal of the constitutional guarantees of equality and fraternity. There were almost none in 1992, and there are almost none today: dalits in the newsrooms of India's media organisations. Stories from the lives of close to 25 per cent of Indians (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) are unlikely to be known — much less broadcast or written about. Unless, of course, the stories are...

Chandoriya village in Madhya Pradesh's Raisen district is down with chicken pox. Over the past 10 days, the virus has spread through the dalit-dominated hamlet situated about 120km north of the state capital.  The district administration on Sunday rushed a medical team to Chandoriya. The situation went out of control as villagers had more faith in quacks than the government hospital and health centres. They believed the disease came as the...

-PTI Uttar Pradesh saw the maximum number of attacks on Scheduled Castes in 2010 when the erstwhile Mayawati government was in charge of the state.   The annual report of the Home Ministry for 2011-12 released on Wednesday said Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number (6,272) of cases of crime against SCs out of a total of 32,712 —19.2 per cent of the total incidents in the country in 2010. The numbers mentioned in...