-The Hindu A recent sting video shows the men acquitted in the Laxmanpur Bathe case boasting about the same massacre. Will the passing of the Prevention of Atrocities (Amendment) Bill finally change the way justice is delivered to Dalits? On the night of December 1, 1997, in Laxmanpur Bathe, a village in Bihar’s Arwal district 90 km from Patna, 58 Dalits were slaughtered by a gang of dominant caste men that went...
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From farmer to businessman -Trilochan Sastry
-The Hindu The fact that food companies prosper but farmers commit suicide shows that profits are in the market, not the farm. It is time to replicate the Amul story many times over In the ongoing debates on the new land acquisition bill, the potential of agribusiness to address agrarian distress has not been explored. There are several domestic agriculture companies, both listed and private, that are doing extremely well amidst an...
More »Whose Net? -Nishant Shah
-The Indian Express Net neutrality prevents profit-driven entities from overriding freedom of the Web. The key thing that should concern all of us this week about the internet is net neutrality. Here is a brief statement of things the way they are, no technical mumbo jumbo, no scholarly interpretations. The internet as we understand it is built on a foundational principle of not discriminating against the information and traffic that flows through...
More »The significance of local power structures in Bihar’s coupon-based PDS -Chetan Choithani & Bill Pritchard
-Ideas for India In 2007, Bihar introduced the coupon system in PDS to curb leakages at fair price shops. This column argues that even though the administrative logic of the coupon system is fundamentally sound, such reform can be effective only when accompanied by institutional transformations that broker change in the existing local politics of inclusion and exclusion. The performance of Bihar’s public distribution system (PDS) remains a topic of considerable national...
More »Plate to Plough: The hands that feed us -Ashok Gulati
-The Indian Express Indian agriculture has made remarkable progress since 1947 and credit for this goes mainly to the farmer. Now we need to repay our debt to the agricultural community As India celebrates its 68th year of independence, it is time to pause and look back at the major challenges we have faced since Independence and how they were overcome, as well as at the mistakes and follies we committed...
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