-Tehelka Adivasis and Dalits have been deprived of a staggering 5 lakh crore over three decades by successive governments. On 31 August 2010, a memorable scene played out in Parliament: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley cornered the then United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government for allegedly diverting funds meant for the welfare of scheduled castes/Scheduled Tribes (SCs/STs) towards Commonwealth Games projects. The master parliamentarian was questioning the then finance minister P Chidambaram on the alleged...
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Call for discrimination shield for Muslims -Imran Ahmed Siddiqui
-The Telegraph New Delhi: A government panel that evaluated Muslims' post-Sachar socio-economic conditions has suggested an anti-discrimination law, targeted mainly at employers, to combat the growing disparity between the community and the rest of the country. The committee, headed by Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Amitabh Kundu, has failed to detect any "sea change on the ground" despite several welfare plans being launched for the community after Sachar's late-2006 report. Like Sachar, the Kundu...
More »Casteism exists in India, let’s not remain in denial -Namita Bhandare
-The Hindustan Times The editor, a liberal man, is taken aback by my question. "I don't hire people on the basis of their caste but their ability," he informs me when I ask how many Dalits he has in his newsroom. Nearly 70 years after Independence, my question should have been irrelevant. But a caste survey by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the University of Maryland, United States,...
More »Mapping exclusion -Amit Thorat
-The Indian Express Three members of a Dalit family in Maharashtra's Ahmednagar were killed, one of them decapitated before being thrown into a dry well in Jawkhede Khalsa village, on the night of October 20. The investigation is still on and the jury out on whether it was an act of caste violence or the result of a dispute. In recent times, however, it seems there is a surge in the...
More »Biggest caste survey: One in four Indians admit to practising untouchability -Seema Chishti
-The Indian Express Sixty-four years after caste untouchability was abolished by the Constitution, more than a fourth of Indians say they continue to practise it in some form in their homes, the biggest ever survey of its kind has revealed. Those who admit to practising untouchability belong to virtually every religious and caste group, including Muslims, scheduled castes and Scheduled Tribes. Going by respondents' admissions, untouchability is the most widespread among Brahmins, followed...
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