Ruth Manorama started her work with the urban poor in her youth; there has been no turning back ever since. She is the powerful voice of Dalit women today. Is it easy being a Dalit in India? And a woman at that? Have things changed for the better for the Dalits who constitute roughly 16.23 per cent of our population, since the Constitution of India “cast a special responsibility on the...

It was the end of a long, tiring and humid day. Sitting near the bamboo gate of his 'precious' betel vineyard, 70-year-old Narayan Mandal said despondently, "I don't want to migrate, once again." Mandal, a resident of Gobindpur village in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district, is one of the many opposing the state government's ambitious $12 billion Posco steel project. For the last six years, three gram panchayats - Dhinkia, Nuagaon and Gada...

-The Hindu   NFIW criticises the approach for targeted PDS and cash transfers The National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) fears that the government plans to do away with the public distribution system (PDS) and move to cash transfers in lieu of foodgrains to the poor through the proposed National Food Security Bill. Demanding that the proposed Bill provide for universal entitlements, decentralised production and procurement, the NFIW has criticised the approach for...

Prakash Karat has decided to share a dais with civil society activists Prashant Bhushan and Aruna Roy, stirring debate in the CPM which largely considers NGOs and their members “anti-Left” and accuses them of furthering the “imperialist strategy”. Some in the CPM believe the general secretary’s presence at the public meeting against corruption will amount to extending legitimacy to the “action groups”, the party’s name for voluntary organisations. Others, though, see Karat...

New Delhi: The Vidarbha farmer's widow whose plight was highlighted by Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi in Parliament, has complained about the Congress led-government in Maharashtra to BJP's Rajnath Singh. With Rahul Gandhi citing her example, Kalavati soon became the face of struggling widows of Vidharbha's suicide zone in Maharashtra where thousands of farmers have died in the last one decade. Kalavati's grouse is that 4,000 other widows have not been given...