-The Times of India   With the National Food Security bill out of the way, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) will now take up issues like urban poverty, especially the vulnerable groups, and reforms in the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Area) Act on a priority basis. Sources said the NAC had already begun consultation on reforms in the PESA. The Act, which has been lying largely in a limbo,...

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 Indian Express   The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has justified the agitation by children against Posco's 12 million tonne steel project calling it "voluntary". "The children think that they are protecting the interest of their families which is contrary to the allegations that children are being coerced to participating the agitation. The anxiety / apprehension on account of the prospect of displacement and loss of the source of...

-The Indian Express   The way to Posco project remained blocked with irate villagers of Mathsahi and Balisahi of Nuagaon Panchayat opposing work for the fourth day on Wednesday. Incidentally, these two villages are main entry points to Nuagaon and Dhinkia Panchayats and the administration had planned to take up work in other hamlets after felling trees here. While the recent face-off between villagers and police turned Posco supporters into antagonists, the...