Nine of 10 mud-eating children are in the last stage of malnutrition. Eight of 10 people are deprived of every national social-security net and live with starvation and hunger. The average life span is 40 In April, the Hindustan Times revealed acute deprivation in the Uttar Pradesh village of Ganne, part of the former constituency of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.   Now, a Supreme Court inquiry team that visited the area...

The PPP model proposed in the Eleventh Plan provides for no government or social control over education. It will lead to the privatisation and commercialisation of education using public funds.  Public-private partnership (PPP) has become a fashionable slogan in new development strategies, particularly over the last couple of decades. It is projected as an innovative idea to tap private resources and to encourage the active participation of the private sector...

The Jagatsinghpur district Administration will start a field-survey for the proposed steel plant of South Korean major Posco from tomorrow. “We have already completed the groundwork. Six teams have been constituted for this and survey will begin at the proposed site from Tuesday,” Jagatsingpur district collector Narayan Chandra Jena said. According to the government order, the district Administration would exclude Dhinkia village, the epicentre of the anti-Posco movement, from the survey. Posco requires...

Dalit women lead unhygienic lives for wages of Rs.15 a month  Caste hierarchy prevents women from doing any other job The Railways and municipalities are the biggest employers Each morning a group of Dalit women step outside their homes to “fulfil their social role” of cleaning dry latrines with their brooms and bare hands. They then carry human excrement in pots and baskets on their heads. Braving the worst possible form of caste...

Hunger deaths present a sober reality check to Bihar government  With the National Democratic Alliance government in Bihar playing cowboys and Indians with the Centre over the number of BPL (below the poverty line) families in the State, Gaya's hunger deaths proffer a sober reality check to the government consistently serenading its schemes for the Maha Dalit community. Three years ago, 14 members of the Bhuiyyan community (a Maha Dalit sub-caste)...