-The Indian Express Ranchi: Over 15 districts spread across Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Orissa saw Durga Puja with a difference this festival season. Instead of the goddess slaying Mahishasur, the usual story of the Puja, this year, tribals and people belonging to Scheduled Castes and backward classes in these districts are celebrating the "demon king" as a non-Aryan inhabitant and a just king of the land, with Durga...
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Where Words Fail -Bhasha Singh
-Outlook India lacks the political will to put an end to manual scavenging When Meena decided to go to school, her mother identified one quite far from her home. Sharda was a manual scavenger and knew that her occupation could spell trouble for her daughter. Meena went to a government school and struggled to reach class VIII. But her ambition was cut short when teachers and the principal at the school...
More »A Tough Gangtok Rap -Soumik Dutta
-Outlook An RTI exposes how the Sikkim govt has blatantly misutilised funds meant for quake relief Whose Money Is It Anyway! Of the Rs 60.45 crore allocated for construction of roads and bridges, the state government gave only Rs 30 crore Another Rs 52.64 crore was allocated, of which the government again spent only Rs 3 crore On the other hand, the...
More »In the name of socialism-Kanwal Bharti
-The Hindu Despite deriving their power from Dalits and the marginalised, the principal parties in Uttar Pradesh have turned away from the real issues confronting these sections, says Dalit writer Kanwal Bharti on his recent arrest My recent arrest has superbly exposed the well crafted illusion of socialism as professed by the Samajwadi Party (SP). I was arrested under Sections 153 and 295 A of the Indian Penal Code for criticising the...
More »Poverty play -Jayati Ghosh
-Frontline Once more, without feeling: the government's latest poverty estimates. YET again the Central government has mired itself in controversy by releasing its latest poverty estimates based on the consumption expenditure survey of the NSSO (National Sample Survey Office) Survey of 2011-12. The Planning Commission's poverty line, using methodology suggested by the Tendulkar Committee in 2010, is now apparently defined as the spending of Rs. 27.20 per capita per day in rural...
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