-The Hindu Jan Breman takes a long view of the changes he’s seen in India over half a century. Perhaps no other scholar in the social sciences has studied India’s poor and its informal economy as intensively as Jan Breman. The sheer temporal span of his research is mind-boggling. He began his study in south Gujarat 15 years after India’s Independence — in 1962. And he was in south Gujarat in...
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Many degrees of hopelessness in India's villages -Harsh Mander
-Hindustan Times The picture of rural Indian life today that emerges from what is probably the world's largest study ever of household deprivation is sobering and sombre. It describes a massive hinterland still imprisoned in persisting endemic impoverishment, want, illiteracy and indeed hopelessness. It tells a story that every thinking and caring Indian must heed. Advocates of free markets, opposed to building a welfare state, have long argued that accelerated market-led economic...
More »No funds, no condoms, 3L in Maharashtra at HIV risk -Sumitra Deb Roy
-The Times of India MUMBAI: A practically broke Maharashtra State Aids Control Society (MSACS) has asked NGOs to curtail their HIV prevention activities in the state and do away with a significant chunk of their workforce. Over 182 projects that cater to nearly three lakh high-risk population in the state will suffer as distribution of condoms and syringes to availability of medicines and testing kits will take a direct hit. The circular...
More »No protection for migrants in new labour laws
In the midst of national debates over the need for labour laws reforms and the efficacy of MG-NREGA in checking distress migration, a new report brings spotlight on the miserable living and working conditions of unorganized migrant workers from Rajasthan. Titled Their Own Country: A Profile of Labor Migration from Rajasthan, the report prepared jointly by Aajeevika Bureau and UNESCO informs us that 70% of seasonal migrant workers from Rajasthan...
More »Outsiders in Kutch’s mini-Punjab: Sikh farmers battling for their land -Satish Jha
-The Indian Express Kutch (Gujarat): Bhajan Singh, 62, remembers the time curious villagers turned up to see a borewell his father Gopal Singh had dug up. The year was 1969 and it was the first time Sumrasar village, near Bhuj in Kutch district, had had a borewell. Few had ever seen it work, as they depended entirely on rainwater for the barely one crop they harvested a year. Originally from Pakistan, Gopal...
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