-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre has told the Supreme Court that SC/ST government employees were automatically entitled for quota in promotions and reiterated the need for reconsideration of the M Nagraj judgment, saying collection of data to determine their backwardness was neither feasible nor desirable. Filing its written note on the matter on Tuesday, the Centre said a community was added to the list of Scheduled Castes after...

-IndiaSpend New Delhi: On July 27, 2018, Rajendra Birhor, a 40-year-old Adivasi, starved to death in Ramgarh, a district in eastern Jharkhand. He belonged to a “particularly vulnerable tribal group” (PVTG) and should have had access to at least two welfare measures that could have saved his life: A pension and a ration card. Like him, 13 others died of starvation in Jharkhand over the last 10 months, according to the latest...

-Livemint.com Rural development secretary Amarjeet Sinha on how MGNREGS has evolved since 2006 to result in income, acreage, water tables, productivity and fodder availability Agrarian distress and rural distress are terms used interchangeably, but the rural economy today is very different from what it was many years ago, given the diversification of rural incomes and hence incorrect to think one means the other, says Amarjeet Sinha, secretary, ministry of rural development. In...

-ThePrint.in Manual scavenging is a reality and Dalit women, particularly, will be forced to shoulder the burden of cleaning dry pits. Prime Minister Narendra Modi frequently tweets appreciation for on-ground workers of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA). One such widely shared post was an image of the secretary in the ministry of drinking water and sanitation, Parameswaran Iyer, going down a double-pit toilet in a rural home and cleaning it. He was lauded...

Good news about digital inclusion often leaves little room for reporting on bad experiences, which netizens encounter in the digital world. A recent report by LIRNEAsia – an ICT [information and communication technology] policy and regulation think tank working in the Asia-Pacific – says that almost one among five Indian netizens in the age-group 15-65 years had faced online harassment in 2017. In contrast, roughly twelve out of hundred internet...