Eliminate administrative gaps which lead to anti-people judgements: Modi told

By A Representative
PS Krishnan, former secretary, ministry of welfare, Government of India, has in a letter asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to eliminate "gaps in governance and administration, revealed by a number of recent judgments which have adversely affected the legitimate interests of Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEdBCs)."
According to Krishnan, "there have been a number of judgments" that suggest, these "have not been and are not being handled effectively", adding, "As a result of these gaps, governments have had to deal with important issues and problems pertaining to SCs, STs and SEdBCs in episodical and disjointed manner, without consistency."
"What has happened in the Forest Rights Act (FRA) case highlights this serious gap, which cries for urgent correction", Krishnan says, adding, "The urgent correction and elimination of these gaps is necessary to remove inequality in ever parameter between the SCs and STs, and also SEdBCs, on the one hand, and the Socially Advanced Castes (SACs), on the other, and thereby to make Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas a reality for these three deprived classes."
Says Krishnan, "The SCs, STs and SEdBCs constitute about 3/4ths of the population of the country and the near-totality of the labour-force of the country. The wealth of the country is largely the product of their labour, which they have been rendering, contributing much more to the nation than what is given back to them in the shape of meagre wages."
Insisting that "they need and deserve the personal attention", the letter says, "I request you to kindly consider introducing and enforcing remedial measures."

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.

From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

By Tersina Maria Toppo* A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.

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