-The Hindu The educational and economic development of Dalits is seen by the backward castes as a challenge to the social order, as recent incidents in Tamil Nadu show On the evening of November 7, 2012, a crowd numbering over 1000 people burst into three Dalit settlements in Dharmapuri, north-western Tamil Nadu, and laid them waste. Over a period of several hours, they looted, smashed and burned. Trees had been felled on...
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Blood, sweat and tears-Alok Gupta
-Down to Earth For RTI activists of Bihar the cost of exposing corruption is life Twenty-year-old Rahul Kumar, a right to information (RTI) activist, knew the land mafia was behind his parents' murder. His mother and father were involved in a land dispute in Muzaffarpur's Sirisia Jagdish village. Barely a week after filing an RTI application to seek information about the murderers, Kumar was kidnapped. A day later, on March 10, 2012,...
More »Panchayats: hope for dalit rights- George Mathew
-Live Mint Panchayat-related caste violence continues unabated and has become a part of the social reality today In ancient India, the panchayat system was based on the age-old caste system, social status and family. Although the local self-government concept was introduced in 1882, it took more than 100 years for the local self-government institutions to become a part of the Indian Constitution. While tremendous possibilities have been opened up in the...
More »Panchayats under the shadow of the ‘khaps’- Sahil Makkar
-Live Mint Despite being declared unconstitutional by SC, ‘khaps' continue to hold sway in parallel with the state machinery Rohtak/Bhiwani: Ravinder Gehlawat and his wife Shilpa had been married for less than four months when they were marched out of their village-Dharana in Jhajjar district of Haryana-by men of the local community and warned never to return. Their fate was sealed on 24 April 2009 when the local khap panchayat, which translates...
More »Marriage bill divides Cabinet; referred to GoM
-The Times of India Differences over what constitutes as a woman's right to her marital property in case of a divorce forced the Union Cabinet to refer the Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill to a Group of Ministers (GoM) on Wednesday. The law ministry had suggested that a woman be given a share in residential property of the husband, including inherited and inheritable premises, in case of divorce, while the ministry of women...
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