Herding cattle and weaving carpets, on city waste-heaps, at traffic lights, in roadside eateries, in farms and in factories, in brick kilns and coal mines, in brothels and in our homes, children of the poor work at an age when our own are in school or at play. What is remarkable is not just our collective acceptance of such diverging destinies of children merely because of the accident of where they...
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NCPCR frowns on govt for violation of RTE Act in state by Shiv Sahay Singh
When the children of brick kiln workers approached Majlispur Free Primary School in North 24 Parganas for admission, the school authorities refused to do so as the children were unable to produce birth certificates. When the parents wrote to the District Inspector (DI), Schools, for children’s admission under Right to Education (RTE) Act, they were told no such thing as RTE existed. At Hindu Balika Vidyalaya at Contai in East Midnapore...
More »India lags behind the West in matrimonial property rights by Swati Deshpande
When it comes to property rights in matrimony, gender matters. The issue of property rights for women within a marriage has long been an area of concern across the world. While Maharashtra is now considering the idea of granting women equal rights in their husband's property, women's rights were being asserted in the US way back in 1771. Almost two-and-a-half centuries ago, New York brought in a law preventing a...
More »The Inconvenient Truth Of Soni Sori by Shoma Chaudhury
Why were two tribals and the Essar group framed by the Chhattisgarh police? Why are Soni Sori and Linga Kodopi being systematically silenced? This chilling story of one family reveals more about India's Naxal crisis than any official document can. AS I sit to write this, at 12.20 pm on 4 October 2011, an SMS pops up on my phone: “Soni Sori has been arrested by the Delhi Crime Branch.” The...
More »Calculating poverty: How India does it
-BankBazaar.com Can you live on Rs 32 a day in Indian cities? This is what everyone is asking after the Planning Commission came up with this figure in its revised estimate of people living below the poverty line. How about living on Rs 26 a day in a village? Impossible, you say. That's the debate that has been going on in India for the past few days. There is certainly something missing with...
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