-The Assam Sentinel DIPHU: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), was introduced with an objective to provide legal guarantee of 100 days of wage in a financial year to every rural household, whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work at the minimum wage rate as has been prescribed for agricultural labour in the State. However, instead of helping the poor in their uplift, MNREGA has become a...

Why has there been such a silence from dalit leaders over the Bathani Tola judgment acquitting all those accused of killing 21 dalits? At the same time, what explains their loud protests over the Ambedkar cartoons in the textbooks? Has the elevation of Ambedkar as an icon relegated the dalit leadership to a politics of empty symbolism? Is the issue of a lack of accountability in the judicial system towards...

Under fire from all quarters for its inability to tackle the problem of black money, the government plans to focus on the real estate and gold and jewellery sectors to stanch the movement of unaccounted funds. The proposed white paper on black money, to be tabled in Parliament’s current session, is likely to propose a debate on “offshore voluntary compliance” for tax evaders with large sums stashed abroad, officials involved in...

What stops the government from using good harvests to reduce, if not eliminate, hunger? For ordinary folk, a 3 per cent increase in food grain production over that of last year, combined with strong procurement operations and good buffer stocks of rice and wheat would be a cause for some celebration. It would be seen as an opportunity to tackle the widespread food insecurity that exists in India today. Instead, we...

Jatav residents of Ramgarh in U.P. resist attempts by members of a powerful community to grab their land by violent means. IN what could be considered one of the worst incidents of vendetta against Dalits in the National Capital Region (NCR), members of the Dalit Jatav community were beaten up brutally by some members of the dominant Gujjar community in Ramgarh village in the Greater Noida area of Uttar Pradesh...