Sanand, a taluka of Ahmedabad district, has been developing rapidly ever since Tata Motors set up its Nano plant here; it is now expected to emerge as the ‘Detroit of India’. But one of its villages, Goraj, hides an ugly fact - ostracisation of a Dalit community. The irony is that this discrimination is taking place barely 50 km from Ahmedabad where Mahatma Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram (also known as Harijan Ashram)...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Plan commission pushes for Dalit empowerment by Prasad Nichenametla
As the Congress scion Rahul Gandhi campaigns in Mayawati' s bastion asking UP's downtrodden to think big, a planning commission panel has shown the UPA government how to walk the talk. A working group on welfare of the Schedule Castes (SCs) has asked the government to set up a National Bank for Inclusive Development to support businessmen from the backward sections. The move is to encourage Dalits and other weaker sections with...
More »Reviving Universal PDS: A Step Towards Food Security by Suranjita Ray
An unprecedented economic growth during the last decade has also seen increasing malnutrition, hunger and starvation amongst certain sections of society. India ranks 66 in the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) World Hunger Index of 88 countries (Inter-national Food Policy Research Institute). More than 200 million people in this country are denied the right to food. One-third of all underweight children (57 million) in the world due to lack of...
More »Harassment glare after Dalit campus suicides by Basant Kumar Mohanty
Manish Kumar could not take it any more. The harassment he had been suffering for three years only because he was a Dalit was showing no signs of abating. So, the IIT Roorkee student killed himself. That was on February 13 this year. Manish had been a third-year BTech student and was the only hope of his family, his shattered father Rajinder Kumar said. “Manish was my only son and the future...
More »UP is home to people with dangerously wide gaps in skills, income and caste by Saurabh Johri
If Uttar Pradesh was to be declared a separate country today, it would be the sixth-largest nation. With a total population at par with Brazil, population density comparable to that of the UK and per-capita income similar to Kenya's, it indicates the paradox of its citizen occupying the same space as his Latin and UK counterparts, yet living in conditions similar to those in Africa. Setting this hypothesis aside, let us...
More »