To replace ‘Dalit’ with ‘SC’, as the Thorat panel recommends, is to be inaccurate A commission led by S.K. Thorat, and charged with reviewing NCERT Political Science textbooks in the wake of the cartoon controversy, has singled out a specific word in the text for removal. All instances of the word “Dalit”, it is recommended, should be replaced with “Scheduled Caste” (SC). The blogosphere is rife with speculation on the motivation...

-The Indian Express An intriguing paradox of contemporary Indian politics has been insufficiently noted: corporate India finances India’s elections, substantially if not wholly, but it is unable to determine election outcomes. Money matters, but it is not always electorally decisive. The recent Uttar Pradesh elections provide the clearest illustration of this proposition. As is well known, the Congress, BJP and BSP were all better financed than the SP which, especially after the...

-Down to Earth   Punjab has been in the grip of cancer for over a decade but the government has ignored the threat.  It all started with a knot in her left breast. Within no time it grew to the size of a tennis ball. In pain, 40-year-old Raj Rani went to the doctor in her village in Punjab’s Ferozepur district. Finding no relief, she started doing the rounds of government hospitals in...

-Inclusion.in There is good news. And there’s bad news. The good news first. There’s been a bumper wheat crop and the granaries are overflowing. And the bad news? Where do we begin? A lot of that grain will rot. Millions will still remain hungry. Heavily in debt and distressed, farmers are committing suicide. Food prices are soaring. There’s more… Farmers don’t have money. Their land is too small and isn’t yielding much. Fertilisers and...

-The Guardian  Use of Sodium Pentothal to secure confessions – classified by some as torture – still common in certain regions of India It is the sort of scene that belongs in a film noir, not a 21st-century democracy: an uncooperative suspect being injected with a dose of "truth serum" in an attempt to elicit a confession. But some detectives in India still swear by so-called narcoanalysis despite India's highest court ruling...