-The Indian Express BJP is attempting to use citizenship issue to woo Namasudra community in Bengal. It is generally believed that unlike other states of India, caste and religion don’t play a significant role in West Bengal’s electoral politics. Academic literature often articulates this as West Bengal’s “exceptionalism”. As a result of the electoral decline of the Left Front and some limited attempts by the Trinamool Congress at community-based mobilisation, the...
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MNREGA job spike to take some load off Congress in Rajasthan -Shalini Nair
-The Indian Express At Rs 199 a day, the Central government-notified MGNREGA wage rate for Rajasthan is Rs 26 less than the state’s minimum wage. Banswara, Bhilwara, Jaipur, Udaipur (Rajasthan): For four years, Pista Sargara (55), a long-standing job card holder under the MGNREGA, approached her panchayat office in Bhilwara Lok Sabha constituency desperate for any work under the scheme. She was turned away each time. The turnaround came in January...
More »Cash for votes -- Tamil Nadu's best kept open secret -T Ramakrishnan
-The Hindu No party admits to offering bribes to voters, even though it is common knowledge that they all do. In the just-concluded elections to 38 Lok Sabha constituencies and 18 Assembly seats in Tamil Nadu, cash seizures alone added up to around ?215 crore, almost 10 times the haul during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. While some activists blame the ‘freebie culture’ in the State, others call for an overhaul...
More »How caste and class shape election results in India -Sriharsha Devulapalli
-Livemint.com The BJP enjoyed greater support among upper caste-dominated affluent districts in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections than in other districts of the country One of the notable features of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s historic victory in 2014 was its ability to attract support across social groups, cutting across traditional divides of caste and class. Yet, support for the party was much greater among certain demographic groups than among others, a Mint...
More »Can Rahul Gandhi's NYAY help Congress revive its fortunes in Rajasthan? -Asit Ranjan Mishra
-Livemint.com * Out of the 1.8 million people living in the Banswara district in 3.6 lakh households, 78% are tribals * With a 46.1% literacy rate, 91.3% of households earn less than ?5,000 per month Banswara, Rajasthan: When Ramchandar, 52, wakes up in his thatched house every morning in the hilly tribal village of Katumbi in Rajasthan's Banswara district, his first preoccupation is to fetch water from the nearest village at a distance...
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