A Great Upsurge of People Which Warned Colonial Powers that Their Rule Must End It was on August 8 1942, 80 years ago, that Mahatma Gandhi gave his great call to the people of India to ‘do or die’ for independence and thereby served notice to the colonial rulers. Even though all the leading Congress rulers were arrested almost immediately,[Read More...]
Handlooms Day ( August 7 ) is a good time to assert the need for a strong protective policy towards not just handlooms ( hand-woven cloth) but also towards cloth which is hand-spun as well as hand-woven ( called khadi in India). In this context we also need to make the wider point, as emphasized by Mahatma Gandhi repeatedly ,that[Read More...]
In the context of the ongoing debate on the Agnipath scheme, one of the factors that has been mentioned sometimes in its favor relates to the need for reducing the pension burden. However this is not relevant due to the reasons given below. Firstly the amount of civilian defense personnel pensions is often included in the armed forces pension bill.[Read More...]
Aruna Rodrigues John Leake is a best-selling an “experienced non-fiction, true crime author”. Having just read what must be described as an extraordinary ‘telling’ of the COVID-19 saga, this book is the narration of true crime on a scale that could top the list in the history of ‘man’s inhumanity to man’. The book chronicles …
Ever too clever by half, he believes common decency is beneath him. In the event, common sense has taken leave of him. When, in July, 2021 Father Stan Swamy succumbed to the combined depredations of a venal State machine and a depraved judicial system, Jaithirth Rao wrote a column in an online newsmagazine which bore a title that to[Read More...]
The Indian parliament passed the J&K Re-‐organisation Act on August 5, 2019, de-‐operationalising Article 370, ending Jammu & Kashmir’s special status and partitioning the erstwhile state into two Union Territories of Ladakh and J&K. Soon after, Jammu & Kashmir’s political and geographical status was changed by imposing massive restrictions on the people of Jammu & Kashmir with several months under[Read More...]
August 5 witnessed the biggest protest of apple growers in Himachal Pradesh in recent decades as a very large number of them joined a march in Shimla, following the getting together of nearly 27 of their organizations under the Sanyukta Kisan Manch ( SKM or Joint Farmers’ Front).This was the biggest protest of apple growers since 1990. Incidentally then too[Read More...]
In the month of June-July, fruit-wise still a month of Mangoes, allegedly some fellows at the behest of Adani Power company and emboldened by administration of WB started destructing mango and lichi orchards in some villages near Farakka (the place famous for barrage) for the purpose of clearing way for constructing transmission towers for carrying electricity from Adani’s power plant in Jharkhand to neighbouring Bangladesh. When villagers protested many were beaten by police and many were arrested.
Sanitary workers are not like other workers of any occupation but they are also one of the most vulnerable communities among scheduled castes in India. Scavenging or sanitary work is still prevalent as a customarily caste based occupation in India. As per 2011 census the population of Hadi community in Odisha was 2.5 lakh who are largely engaged in sanitary work. They are also called by different local names such as Mehenter, Behera, sweeper and scavengers.
While the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act ( MG-NREGA or simply NREGA)has certainly provided an important means of improving rural livelihood prospects, it is increasingly clear that its implementation problems are increasing, and this is particularly true this year.
