-The Telegraph New Delhi: The M.P. Bezbaruah committee suggested in its report to the Centre last month that a law be drafted specifically to prevent discrimination against people from the Northeast living outside the region. The panel was set up after the lynching of Arunachal Pradesh student Nido Tania in Delhi's Lajpat Nagar in January this year. So far, only the committee's push for a debate on the need for an anti-racism...

-Down to Earth Blog The performance of nutrition indicators amongst Dalits is improving, it is nowhere near the catch-up pace Does a new government and a strong Prime Minister claiming to hail from the backward caste augur Achche Din for Dalits too? We hope so! But political commitment-or lack of it-has multiple manifestations. In a deeply stratified society like India with entrenched elitism, people from the Scheduled Caste (referred to as Dalits...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A Constitution bench has ruled that the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are entitled to affirmative action in promotions, quashing a 1997 government memo that withdrew the benefit. Friday's verdict by the five-judge Supreme Court bench does not necessarily mean that the Centre and state governments - to which the judgment applies equally - are bound to offer benefits in promotion to all Dalit and tribal employees from...

-The Hindu Jaipur (Rajasthan): It was Jaipal's wedding at Gugal Kota in Alwar on June 21. His father, Roshan Lal, made him ride a decorated horse, at the head of the wedding party, to the bride's home. But the Rajputs in the village disliked such a celebration by a Dalit family and they would not allow it to go on. Mr. Jaipal was pulled down from the horse on the road and...

-The Hindu   The national discourse is so superficial that it only talks of foreign direct investment, investment allowance, tax sops and the like which are just about a twentieth to a sixth of the national economy. It did not even notice paragraph 102 in the Union budget speech which is about half of India's economy. Commentators see facts hidden in budgets as the "devil's in the detail." This presumes that only...