-The Indian Express The Dalit villagers alleged that the attacks followed an order by the pradhan, Pramod Rana, at a panchayat in the Gujjar-dominated village. Baghpat: FORTY-EIGHT hours after members of the Gujjar community attacked two Dalit teenagers of Kamala village in Baghpat, about a third of its Dalit homes stood deserted. All the young women had been sent away “as precaution”. Akash Khondwal, 19, a BA student, is on ventilator support...

-Business Standard/ India Spend Delays in wage payment have been a constant throughout MGNREGS implementation Bachcha Lal’s shirt hung loosely over his frail body, exposing his sunken collarbones, as he stood outside his straw-thatched home in central Uttar Pradesh’s (UP) Bundelkhand region. “They all rely on me,” he said, pointing towards his tubercular son, daughter-in-Law and grand-daughter. Illiterate and a landless labourer, 65-year-old Lal makes about Rs 175 a day when he...

-Hindustan Times A 6% fall between 2015-16 and 2016-17 was reported in RTI applications filed with the 1,950 public authorities of the Central government, which receives maximum information applications followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka. The right to information Law meant to empower Indians and bring transparency in governance appeared to be losing steam with the number of queries going down mainly because of stone-walling of information by officials and slow disposal of...

-The Hindu The problem with the SC/ST Act is the failure of the criminal justice system to recognise its own casteist biases For India’s Dalits and Adivasis, May 1 this year was a ‘May Day’ in more ways than one. It was May Day, the day to commemorate the labour movement (the vast majority of them do belong to the working classes), and also ‘mayday’ in the maritime sense, an occasion to...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In its effort to double farmers’ income by 2022, the government on Wednesday approved continuation of the agri umbrella scheme—‘Green Revolution - Krishonnati Yojana’—with a central outlay of over Rs 33,269 crore till March 31, 2020. The programme was launched last year after clubbing the existing 11 different schemes for better implementation and monitoring. The 11 schemes, focussing on creating/strengthening of infrastructure of production, reducing...