Nearly a dozen Dalit families have left this village in the last 15 days as last year's violence in Mirchpur has come back to haunt them. It was here that a 70-year-old and his physically-challenged daughter were killed in an attack by the dominant Jat community. The fear of violence from Jats, who have over the past 12 days staged protests demanding the release of those arrested for the incident in...

The Central government has revised wages of agricultural labourers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The new wages are based on the consumer price index (CPI), as suggested by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and are retrospectively effective from January 1, 2011. Linking wages to CPI has enhanced them from 17% to 30%. The revised salaries will benefit over 50 million people across India. The base wage, which was...

A Faridabad-based RTI activist has alleged that he has been receiving threat calls from the local land mafia for filing a PIL against illegal conversion of industrial land for commercial use in the city. Although the Punjab and haryana High Court had asked the city police to look into his threat perception in 2009, police have done nothing so far. Kishan Lal Gera, who was appointed as an adviser to...

The 11-day-long agitation by the residents of Mirchpur and adjoining villages, demanding a fresh probe into the killing of two Dalits, ended on Wednesday after talks with haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Tuesday concluded on a positive note. The talks between Bhag Singh Jalabh, convener of the 41-member committee constituted by the Sarvjatiya Sarvkhap Mahapanchayat, and Mr. Hooda were held in Kaithal. Mr. Jalabh said the meeting was held in...

I remember being disturbed enough to stop watching the 2003 Hindi movie Matrubhumi(motherland). Set in the future, it depicted an Indian village populated only by men. It gets that way after a man, yearning for a boy, publicly drowns his newborn girl in a vat of milk, sparking a custom that wipes out women. So the men watch porn, fornicate with farm animals. A father marries his five sons to...