Anand Patwardhan’s paean to Dalits, that took 14 years to compose, probes even as it praises, says Saroj Giri THERE IS an entrenched tendency to represent Dalits fighting for rights and reservations as just (another) competitive bloc vying for self-interest and power. It leads to a pernicious inversion: ‘Dalit rights’ dividing the nation along caste lines. Victim as perpetrator! Anand Patwardhan’s film Jai Bhim Comrade takes us beyond the grid of...
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A Cowed-Down Nation-Meena Kandasamy
Why kill over a people’s dietary preference for beef? “The university and all Teaching systems that appear simply to disseminate knowledge are made to maintain a certain social class in power, and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class.... The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack...
More »Let a hundred children blossom-Krishna Kumar
A classroom reflecting life's diversity will benefit children of all strata while enriching Teaching experience. Now that the Supreme Court has validated the Right to Education (RTE), its success will depend on teachers. When I said this to a friend who teaches in a primary school, she said, “you are being unfair.” I was startled to hear this response because what I had said was common sense. When I pointed this...
More »India's fish, foodgrain production scene bright
-The Times of India The Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) is upbeat about fish and foodgrain production during the 12th Five Year Plan (FYP) period. While the current fish production - marine and inland is about 12 million tonnes and foodgrain production touched 250 million tonnes in last fiscal, ICAR's projection for fish production in 2017, when 12th FYP ends is 15-16 million tonnes. Foodgrain production target of the nation...
More »The Right to Learn
-Economic and Political Weekly Two years after the Right to Education Act, the government needs to focus on quality. Two years is perhaps too short a period in which to assess how effective the groundbreaking Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (RTE), which came into effect on 1 April 2010, has been in raising standards of education in a country as diverse as India. The very fact that...
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