-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...

-Scroll.in Suranga is a horizontal tunnel-like well excavated in a hillside. Even as Kerala reels under severe drought, Gangadhar Rao never misses a day to irrigate thousands of areca nut trees, coconut trees and pepper plants on his 30 acres of farmland. Rao is a farmer from Bedadka Panchayath in Kerala’s northernmost district of Kasaragod and depends on Suranga for all his water needs — irrigation and domestic — round the year. Suranga is...

Promises are made to be broken. In its 2014 Lok Sabha election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made the promise that if it is elected to the Centre, it will then accord a high priority to job creation and opportunities for entrepreneurship, among other things. But latest data on unemployment shared by the BJP MP Shri Bandaru Dattatreya in written form while replying to an unstarred question in the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A UN report released today has ranked India 131 out of 188 countries worldwide on human development and has cited figures suggesting that about half of India's people face deprivation in education, health and living standards. Inequality, multidimensional poverty and gender gaps appear to be factors holding back India's progress on the human development index (HDI), a measure linked to progress towards a long, healthy life, access to...

-The Indian Express The new law allows maternity leave up to 12 weeks for women who adopt a child below the age of 3 months, and for commissioning mothers (in cases of surrogacy) The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2017, passed by Parliament last week, has made 26 weeks of paid maternity leave mandatory for all women employed in the organised sector. The more than doubling of the existing entitlement of 12 weeks...