-TheWire.in Methodological innovation is required to re-evaluate and investigate how backwardness is defined. The 11 criteria the Mandal Commission specified could act as a framework. The passing of the 124th Amendment Bill of the Indian constitution on January 14, 2019, made the way for a 10% ‘economically weaker sections’ or EWS quota in (a) educational institutions run by the Union government and private institutions (except those managed by minorities), and (b) in...

-The Telegraph Radhakamal Mukerjee: an ecological pioneer In 1922, a professor at Lucknow University named Radhakamal Mukerjee published a book called Principles of Comparative Economics. Reading the book one hundred years later, I was struck by the attention it paid to the impact of the natural environment on the social and economic life of Indian villages. Mukerjee was perhaps the first Indian scholar to recognise the vital importance of common property resources...

-The Hindu It is our duty to ‘caution government’ when its policies have potential to affect the Rights of tribal people, says Harsh Chouhan, Chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes It is the duty of the commission to “caution the government” when its policies have the potential to affect the well-being and Rights of tribal people, Harsh Chouhan, Chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST), told The Hindu...

-Newsclick.in The Van Gujjars are among a few surviving transhumant pastoral communities worldwide. They are a rarity in that they are one of the few Muslim Tribals who have survived as nomads to the present day. Eighty-six Families from Silan, a Van Gujjar settlement in Shivpuri Range, Tehri Garhwal, have filed their claims under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 and further submitted them...

-Press release by Azim Premji University dated October 13, 2022 New Delhi & Bangalore, October 13:  About 39 percent of all jobcard-holding households interested in working under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 did not get a single day of work in the Covid year of 2020-21. Also, on average, only 36 per cent of households that worked received their wages in 15 days, showed a survey of...