India may well be on its way to becoming a superpower, but for millions of marginalized communities — transgenders, female sex workers, men having sex with men (MSM), intravenous drug users (IDUs) — the struggle to live a life with dignity and respect continues. These communities face an uphill battle for a government recognised identity card cutting access to nearly all welfare schemes. Representatives from 20 NGOs and community based...

Last week's column, “The plight of Dalits and the news media” (October 25, 2010), has generated a lively and interesting response from several readers. The column was about the prioritisation of the tasks before the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes (NCSC) by its new Chairman, P.L. Punia (not P.J. Punia as erroneously mentioned in the column.) The concern of most who wrote was over the failure of successive governments...

Back in May 2010, sixty Dalits, who had worked their entire lives as manual scavengers, burned the baskets they used for collecting human excreta outside the District Collector's office here. They had just been employed as sweepers by the local administration under a rehabilitation scheme. Five months later, all of them are without work, having been suspended, astonishingly, for not working hard enough. “It took us a lot of courage to...

India’s first Aadhaar-holder Ranjana Sonawane (40) is angry. Her family couldn’t go to work over the past month because the state government kept them busy preparing for Wednesday’s launch ceremony. The Tembhli village resident was handed over her Aadhaar  — 78247431788 — at a ceremony attended by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “Sanmaanache kaay gheun basat, ithe khayaala kahi nahi. (Damn the honour, we don’t have anything...

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGA) has been in news mainly due to corruption or inefficiency. The country has spent close to Rs 40,000 crore this fiscal but a large number of urban middle class people and opinion leaders don’t know what to make of it. Cynicism apart, the rights-based scheme has proved to be a game-changer in rural India despite mixed success. The scheme has been relatively...