-Livemint.com One of the big drivers of the ruling BJP’s massive victory in 2014 was its ability to exploit inequalities within caste groups to expand its support base New Delhi: When we think of caste-based inequality in India, we typically think of a pyramid where Scheduled Castes (SCs or Dalits) and scheduled tribes (STs) are at the bottom, other backward classes (OBCs) above them, and upper castes at the very top....

-The Indian Express Denotified tribes are those that were labelled as criminals through a legislation by British government and were denotified post-independence. Even as the Bill to accord constitutional status to the OBC commission is awaiting passage in Parliament, the NITI Aayog has backed a proposal by a panel constituted by the Ministry of Social justice and Empowerment to set up a permanent commission for Denotified (DNT), Semi Nomadic (SNT), and Nomadic...

-Scroll.in Untouchability was outlawed in 1950, but discrimination and segregation of the Scheduled Caste remains pervasive. Musahars, a Scheduled Caste that sections of Hindu society deem untouchable, are still being denied government entitlements such as state pensions and housing. The discrimination is blatant when it comes to accessing government healthcare in Badagaon administrative block of Varanasi district in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous province. The scourge of discrimination is so pervasive that...

-Livemint.com Odisha is a front-runner in women’s land ownership, much of it owing to government policies from the 1980s. But has ownership led to empowerment? Surrounded by sun-drenched paddy fields interspersed with jackfruit and banana trees, Sanakusupadu is a hamlet in Odisha’s tribal-dominated district of Rayagada. Here, almost every married woman owns land. No matter how small the holding, land documents of the 62 households in this village bear the names of the...

-The Hindu Business Line Most suicides among landless and marginal farmers Hyderabad: Tenant farmers and cotton growers in Telangana are under severe distress according to a survey of farm families whose bread winner committed suicide. About 75 per cent of the suicide were by tenant farmers and 81 per cent of them were cotton growers. The survey by the Rythu Swarajya Vedika and a group of students from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)...