Overlooked and ignored, the problem of untouchability continues to be practised and perpetrated in the country. It is a lifetime of misery and humiliation, unimaginable for the relatively privileged but a daily reality for over one-fifth of the country’s 120 crore-plus population, as revealed succinctly in 22 short and easy to view videos under the Article 17 Campaign launched on April 14, 2012 by India Unheard, which claims to be...
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Civil society activists seek new Communal Violence Bill-Mohammad Ali
Seven months after the National Integration Council (NIC) meeting in September “discussed and dumped” the National Advisory Council (NAC)-drafted ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparation) Bill, civil society activists from across the country representing more than 50 organisations came together to pronounce the Bill as “dead.” They also demanded that the Union government come up with a new draft of the Bill focused on “making public...
More »Editor-in-Chief of Bihar-Dhirendra K Jha
How an image-fixated chief minister has bent the state’s media to his will If you haven’t heard of an income tax raid on the residential premises of Nitish Kumar’s close aide and treasurer of the ruling Janata Dal-United (JD-U), Vinay Kumar Sinha, you are not alone. Thanks to the local media, it took a while even in Patna—where the house is located—for people to get to know. This, incidentally, is the...
More »Microfinance institutions escape charge of abetting suicide of clients-M Suchitra
In 2010, Andhra Pradesh witnessed a series of suicides. These were not cases of farmers' suicides—a regular occurrence in the state which continues to be in the grip of an agrarian crisis. The victims in these cases happened to be the poorest of the poor; most of them illiterate dalits and adivasis. The first information reports (FIRs) of the police reveal that most of the suicides were due to coercive...
More »Bengal democracy in darkness, says scientist Partho Sarothi Ray
-The Times of India The molecular biologist who was arrested and put behind bars for 10 days for his role in the Nonadanga protests said on Wednesday he was committed to the slum-dwellers' cause. Partho Sarothi Ray insisted at a press conference within hours of walking out of jail that he had been framed, and described the situation in Bengal as a "dark state of democracy". "I was not on the spot...
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