-Live Mint He is at the head of a march to Delhi for a new policy that promises every poor family a small patch of land Morena (Madhya Pradesh): One hot Friday in October, a 64-year-old man named P.V. Rajagopal is marching at the head of a procession of around 50,000 people on the highway from Gwalior to Delhi. Rajagopal is slight and heavily sunburnt, and has walked tens of thousands of kilometres...
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It's their world too -Gautam Bhan
-The Hindustan Times The recent regularisation of around 900 colonies in Delhi is an inevitable and welcome move. No city can allow a majority of its residents to live in conditions of illegality, particularly when that illegality is a direct outcome of its own history of urban planning. However, why are moves to regularise unauthorised colonies not being followed by similar moves to regularise bastis (often reductively called 'slums') that house...
More »Nailing the lie of the land-Medha Patkar
-The Hindu A few thousand representatives of various people’s movements from across the country have gathered at Jantar Mantar in the national capital. They are Dalits, Adiviasis, sections of unprotected working class including farmers and fish-workers but they all form one ‘biradari’ of those who live off land, water, forest. They are the ones who produce, distribute, build, operate, clean, sell, drive and do all that enable society to survive, proceed...
More »NRHM to be expanded to towns also, says Manmohan-Aarti Dhar
-The Hindu Scheme coming for free distribution of medicines through public hospitals and health centres The government will expand the scope of the NRHM to all towns and cities, by converting it into a National Health Mission (NHM), Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced on Wednesday. In his Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort here, he said the government was also formulating a new scheme for distribution of free medicines...
More »The More They Change-Panini Anand
-Outlook Kejriwal’s original experiment in Sundar Nagri lies in tatters It was the summer of 2002. An IRS officer on study leave from the Income Tax department would travel daily to the slums of Sundar Nagri, in the north-east district of Delhi, close to the Uttar Pradesh border. Working with friends, he aimed to make the locality a powerful example of people’s empowerment. He was then an unknown; now, everyone knows...
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