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The struggle for education: A chronicle of neglect
This is the story of Priya Manna Basti’s struggle since 1931 to keep education alive by setting up community schools and libraries funded by 1-anna donations from households. It is a chronicle of state neglect More... The school of lifeAt the root of the growing poverty in Priya Manna Basti is the absence of quality education. Only 10% of the residents have finished secondary education, and only 5% are graduates. Around 50% of children of school-going age are out of school. Amina Khatoon points out the reasons for these shocking statistics in the third part of her series on urban poverty More... The tribal’s rightDahanu’s special environmental status has made little difference to the poverty-stricken Warli tribals, shunted out of the forests and lands they cultivated for generations. The 2006 Tribal Bill, on the other hand, goes a long way in granting them their rightful share of the forests More... Women at work: The betel nut crackersA photo-essay on the poor, lower-caste, mostly non-literate women of Karnataka who labour undocumented and unrecognised behind the scenes of the multi-crore betel nut industry More... Victory for Tamil Nadu’s manual scavengersActing on a PIL by a public-spirited citizen, the Tamil Nadu Hight Court has censured the state government for violation of the Eradication of Manual Scavenging & Dry Latrine (Abolition) Act 1993, and for contravening the law by employing manual scavengers in its own civic bodies More... The hungry tideThis is a detailed account of the ways in which cyclone Aila has snapped the fragile balance between man and nature in the delicate ecosystem of the Sundarbans, rendering a return to normalcy almost impossible. And Aila could be only a forerunner in a series of storms caused by climate change More... Dreaming of a peer to peer worldMichel Bauwens, founder of the Peer to Peer Foundation, is one of those who believe in open spaces and creation without incentive. In this interview he talks about the Free Software and Wikipedia movements as pointers to a genuine change in the way we think, create and distribute goods. He believes that we have never before had such real-time possibilities for human cooperation and collective intelligence on a global scale More... Coastal notification out, fresh rules likely for fishworkersThe Ministry of Environment and Forests has agreed to drop the proposal to replace the current Coastal Regulation Zone notification with a controversial Coastal Management Zone notification. Minister Jairam Ramesh conveyed this to a delegation of the National Fishworkers Forum that met him in Delhi recently More... For 40,000 people, this is homeTwenty people to 100 square feet, 100 people to a single toilet, open drains, illegally “hooked” electricity, young men wrapped in plastic sheets sleeping out in the rain….Part 2 in our series on urban poverty in Priya Manna Basti, Howrah More... All aboard the ladies specialMore than 80% of women in Delhi say they are sexually harassed on public transport. The paternal administration’s only response is to further sexualise public spaces by offering ladies special buses with curtains to protect women from the male gaze More... ‘We lacked a civil society movement to halt the hatred in Gujarat’When minorities have no place in a state sworn to secularism, when freedom of speech and expression is curtailed, what vibrant Gujarat are we talking about, asks Father Cedric Prakash, human rights activist from Ahmedabad More... The activistocracyAnother world is certainly possible, but is another World Social Forum, wonders Achal Prabhala, recalling the crucial debates at the plenaries between crypto-autonomists and anarcho-syndicalists or whatever, while the masses slept in the back rows and indigenous people sang and shouted “Down Down World Bank!” every time a camera crew passed by More... India failing adivasi tribes with sickle cellWith the spotlight on lifestyle diseases like diabetes and hypertension, traditional illnesses like sickle cell disease, which affects tribals all across India, are not receiving the attention they deserve More... A lost generation in Jammu's refugee campsFor 19 years, Kashmiri Pandits living in refugee camps in Jammu have seen no change in their poor living conditions. Riddled by disease, crammed into one-room tenements, and rendered unemployable by poor education and lack of employment opportunities, a whole generation has grown up angry, depressed and alienated More... Trapped into farmingThe declaration of Dahanu as an ecologically fragile zone in 1991 has had repercussions on the orchard economy too. Farmers, already troubled by declining yields and globalisation, cannot convert their orchards to non-agricultural use. They feel they are trapped into farming by an environmentalism that is out of context More... |
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