Back in May 2010, sixty Dalits, who had worked their entire lives as manual scavengers, burned the baskets they used for collecting human excreta outside the District Collector's office here. They had just been employed as sweepers by the local administration under a rehabilitation scheme. Five months later, all of them are without work, having been suspended, astonishingly, for not working hard enough. “It took us a lot of courage to...

Dalit activist Meena Kandasamy: This is something that has to be changed Dalits make up more than 16% of India's population of one billion. Yet, despite years of campaigning and state intervention, many of them still face discrimination in society. Their hardship has been highlighted at an exhibition in London. A little girl leans against a stained turquoise concrete wall. You first notice her face, which appears deep in thought - then your...

Claims about the benefits of Posco's $12 billion integrated steel project to Orissa's economy and job market come from a study by an “independent” research organisation — but was paid for by Posco itself. In January 2007, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) published a report on ‘Social Cost Benefit Analysis of the POSCO Steel Project in Orissa,' which claimed that the project would directly and indirectly generate 8.7...

Arcelormittal’s plans to set up a six million tonne per annum (mtpa) steel plant in Bellary district of Karnataka is on track, with farmers coming forward to accept the compensation package for land acquisition. The world’s largest steel producer had zeroed in on Kuditini in Bellary district to set up its plant and laid out a land requirement of around 4,000 acres. However, these plans were opposed by some farmer groups...

The number of Internet users worldwide has doubled in the past five years and will surpass the 2 billion mark in 2010, with the majority of the 226 million new users this year coming from developing countries, the United Nations telecommunication agency reported today. The number of people with Internet access at home has increased from 1.4 billion in 2009 to almost 1.6 billion in 2010, with 65 per cent of...