Can more knowledge about our society, about the individuals and groups who constitute it, be a bad thing? I’ve been wondering about this lately, in the context of two government initiatives to gather more knowledge about us Indians, as caste groups and as individuals. Both of these information-gathering exercises—the proposal for a “caste census”, which has generated a stormy argument, and the merely desultory discussion over the planned Unique Identification...
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Bhopal panic seeps into Singur Ash from factory with blot on record by Kinsuk Basu and Jayanta Basu
Bhopal cast a pall on Singur today, fed by a cocktail of pollution, panic and politics. A chemical factory, declared a “fit case for closure” by the state pollution control board (PCB) two months ago, spewed carbon soot-laced smoke this dawn. The plant belongs to Himadri Chemicals and InDustries, a company with an annual turnover of over Rs 500 crore and said to be the country’s largest manufacturer of coal tar...
More »Land sop in tribal policy antidote by Cithara Paul
The Centre is gearing to introduce a tribal policy that has been gathering Dust for five years, hoping the move will win the tribals over from the Maoists. The draft of the National Tribal Policy, which proposes land rights for Adivasis and aims to bring their human development indices on a par with the rest of the country by 2020, will be placed before the cabinet this month, tribal ministry officials...
More »NHRC annoyed over bureaucratic delay in changing village name by Vinay Kumar
What is there in a name? A lot, if one goes by the efforts of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in getting the name of a Rajasthan village changed as even after more than six decades of independence, it still carries a derogatory caste-based connotation for the villagers. A Dusty village in Dausa district of Rajasthan, known as “Kuwan Ka Vas,” had its name changed by the revenue officials...
More »A Handful of Pebbles by Shriya Mohan
IN PATNI, a remote village in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh, sevenmonth- old Sandeep is playing in the mud. He finds a pumpkin seed in the Dust and promptly puts it into his mouth. A tiny piece of cow dung, a pebble, a fallen leaf and finally the sole of a rubber slipper follow the pumpkin seed. For Sandeep and the children in the 300- odd families in the village,...
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