The virility of Muslim men vis-à-vis men from other religious communities have often been used as a political tool and to create a divisive agenda just before elections for getting votes from the majority of the Indian electorate who are Hindus. Instead of focusing on positive agendas like human development, employment generation, and poverty reduction, political campaigns just before the elections oftentimes reduce to mere communal propaganda (when a lot...

-Newsclick.in Story of the tribal women of South Gujarat who form nearly half the workforce of 2.5 lakh sugarcane workers yet are the worst exploited in the sugar industry Manisha Sunilbhai Shinde, a tribal sugarcane worker of Jarsol village in Dang, Gujarat, is a mother of one at the age of 20. Married to a sugarcane labourer at the age of 15, she went from working in her parent’s koyta unit to...

-Newslaundry.com A new survey titled Locked Out notes that 37 percent of rural children are ‘not studying at all’. In the Kumtu tribal hamlet of Jharkhand, eight-year-old Suman, who would now be in Class 3, has not gone to school in nearly two years, owing to the coronavirus-induced lockdown in the country, imposed in March last year. Before the lockdown, when the local government school in her village would open sporadically, Suman...

-The Hindu Poshan Swaraj Abhiyan initiative covers 750 tribal-dominated Rajasthan villages. Jaipur: Children and adolescents in 750 villages of the tribal-dominated Banswara district in Rajasthan have started receiving nutritious food as part of the Poshan Swaraj Abhiyan to strengthen their health status ahead of an impending third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The campaign seeks to protect the most vulnerable among undernourished children. Banswara-based Vaagdhara, which works on tribal livelihood issues, has taken...

-Down to Earth The children, mostly girls, were rescued from a railway station  Child trafficking has seen a spurt in Odisha — especially in tribal-dominated districts of the state — following the resumption of train services amid the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.  At least 20 adolescents, mostly girls (18) aged 15-17, have been rescued by activists from non-profit Childline Foundation of India (CFI), from Berhampur railway station in Ganjam district from July...