The labour ministry’s focus is on registered construction workers and provident fund subscribers, excluding a vast majority of the working poor. Continue reading Covid-19 relief: When India doesn’t count the poor as workers
Jirua Parhaian and Dhaneshwar Parhaiya in Jharkhand’s Manika listened quietly while government officials acknowledged the problems that Parhaiya Adivasis face in availing of government schemes meant for them. Continue reading Particularly vulnerable Adivasi speak of despair, hunger at tech “disruption” of social schemes
India has an enormous tuberculosis crisis, but the government still does not have an accurate estimate even of how many Indians suffer from the disease. A million cases are still not notified every year, and people remain undiagnosed, or inadequately diagnosed and struggle for accessing full treatment. While TB can be cured by a drug regimen of six months, the emergence and increase in antibiotics resistant TB is a concern. These stories trace the effects of economic and health policies in on workers with TB and their experiences with drug resistant TB: Stone-crushing workers in Ajmer suffer as the government’s … Continue reading Reporting series on tuberculosis among workers
Sticky post
Women miners in Rajasthan, many from the Dalit and Bhil communities work as a farm labourer for a part of the year, and in the sandstone mines seasonally that are a major source of sandstone exports to Europe and the US. Continue reading Women miners toil over sandstone for export
“At worst the Africans saw the Indians as illiterate, barefooted, clannish heathens, misers who hoarded coins under their bed, who had strange uncivilized costumes, who spread dung on the walls and floors of their homes, stunted, thin-limbed and shifty-eyed. At worst, Indians saw the Africans as the condemned: ugly, black of skin, with wide noses and twisted coir for hair, mimics of the white masters, without a language, culture or religion of their own, frivolous, promiscuous, violent, lazy.” p 120 …”I had thought of chutney as a music without pain, but I had begun to see I was wrong. Reggae … Continue reading Sly book
The Hindu Whether due to economic disparities or the stoking of enmities by different religious groups, the chasm between Sarna and Christian tribals has widened Two months before polling began in Jharkhand, Ajay Tirkey began dividing his day between campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Ranchi and attending to his real estate business. Mr. Tirkey, who heads the Central Sarna Committee(CSC), with lakhs of animistic Sarna tribals as members in urban parts of Ranchi, Gumla and Hazaribagh, believes that the BJP’s Narendra Modi will get the community what it has been demanding for decades: the distinction of being a … Continue reading Tribals torn apart by religion
Dayamani Barla had made up her mind to fight elections soon after being released from jail. In the winter of 2012, the activist spent 69 days locked in a small cell in Birsa Munda jail in Ranchi. She was accused in a case relating to leading 400 Oraon tribal farmers in Nagri as they questioned why the campuses of elite institutes such as the IIM Ranchi, and a national law university be built on their fertile multi-crop farmland when there was ample barren land nearby. Nagri’s tribal women farmers carried fruits for Dayamani at every appearance she made at Ranchi … Continue reading Lok Sabha Khunti: Dayamani’s long fight for the forests, for equality
Deep inside the Saranda sal forest, Thalkobad lies at the core of what was a CPI (Maoist) “liberated zone” in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district along the Odisha border. Thalkobad, along with 24 other villages, was reclaimed by the Indian state after a massive military operation – Operation Anaconda-I in August 2011 to destroy the CPI (Maoist) Eastern Regional Bureau and several training training camps inside Saranda. The village bears scars of conflict – a high machaan used by the then rebel government of the village is intact but the secondary school building the Maoists took cover in to return fire … Continue reading More mines, fewer schools in former Maoist stronghold
More than 50 tribal farmers, including women, were detained for over six hours on Tuesday at the Sundarpahari police station in Godda, a kilometre from the venue where President Pranab Mukherjee laid the foundation for a thermal power plant to be set up by Jindal Steel and Power Limited (JSPL). Farmers from 11 villages in Nimpaniya and Goiarijor blocks said they had gathered in Sundarpahari to oppose land acquisition by the JSPL. At 10 a.m. they were detained by the police and kept in the station premises till evening. “My family lives in Seemaldhap village in Chota Amarpur. More than … Continue reading Tribal farmers detained for protesting land acquistion for Jindal power plant
In July 2011, when the Supreme Court asked the Chhattisgarh government to disband the Salwa Judum and to desist from using SPOs in any manner in countering Maoist activities, the recruitment of SPOs in Jharkhand too was paused briefly. It was resumed in November after a Bench of Justice Altamas Kabir and S.S. Nijjar said the July order applied only to Chhattisgarh. The process of recruitment has since continued. Jharkhand has a sanctioned strength of 6,400 SPOs, though officials put the current number at 3,000. “Ranchi and Khunti witness high levels of retribution killings because of the presence of Maoists- … Continue reading Jharkhand Special Police Officers become the target of Maoists
Last month two 14-year-old adivasi girls, who had migrated from Khunti district to work in Delhi as domestic help, were found dead in mysterious circumstances, both within two days of each other. On April 19, Jyoti Mariyam Hora died soon after she was brought to the Madan Mohan Malviya Hospital in Delhi’s Malviya Nagar. Two days later, Dayamani Guriya, who had studied with Jyoti till class VI and had migrated to Delhi with her, died in mysterious circumstances at the Ranchi railway station when she was being sent back to her village in Torpa in Khunti with police’s intervention. The … Continue reading Adivasis’ dangerous journey into the urban jungle
Adivasi villagers at Amvatikar have accused the CRPF of beating them and using them as shields as they were forced to search for security personnel’s bodies in the Katiya forest in Latehar district on January 8. Eleven security personnel were killed in an encounter with Maoists on January 7. Fifteen security personnel – four were yet to gain consciousness – were treated for bullet wounds at Apollo Hospital in Erba on the outskirts of Ranchi. Vijay Turi, a farmer from Amvatikar village in Latehar district was also being treated at the hospital for injuries in his eyes, on his face … Continue reading ‘We were used as human shields in Latehar against Maoists’
I got a chance to speak about my experience of reporting on bonded debt among Sahariya tribals in Baran in Rajasthan at May Diwas celebrations organized by Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) in Rajsamand district in May 2011. MKSS organizes a mela for May Day every year at Bhim in Rajsamand. 285 from Anumeha Yadav on Vimeo. Roughly translates to: I had first traveled to Kishanganj and Shahbad blocks in Baran in December 2010 after listening to 16 Sahariya agriculture workers at a MKSS dharna in Jaipur for minimum wages in MNREGA. They said they had been in bonded debt … Continue reading Thinking about Baran, December 2010
On the morning of November 20 Nandi Kashap and Parveen Toppo woke up at five am, an hour earlier than usual. By seven, both women were in the village akhada (square) to join a group of 20 gathered there. For two days Rapid Action Force (RAF) constables stationed in their village – two companies numbering 150 – had turned them away each time they tried to harvest the paddy they planted in August. “We will have to go to each others plots and harvest this together in big groups. Let us see how they stop us,” the group concluded. By … Continue reading Nagri villagers defy government to harvest paddy
Fresh coaldust arrives from sponge iron plants. Kids run to find manganese scrap to sell. In Giridih, Jharkhand, today Continue reading Kids, Giridih
Bhojan Adhikaar Yatra, a campaign demanding a comprehensive food security Bill, reached Jamshedpur on Tuesday after traveling through Bihar, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal. In 2009, the Jharkhand Government reduced the price of rice to Re.1/kg and entitled families with Antyodaya cards to get rice for free. But the distribution of Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards continues to be based on a survey by the Bihar Government 15 years ago, and many poor families are still excluded from PDS. The Government did a fresh survey last year, but the date for issuing fresh ration cards based on this survey had been … Continue reading In Jharkhand, entire hamlets wait for ration cards
Primitive Tribal Groups (PTGs) living in Chattisgarh, India, struggle to provide for their families and are forced to lie about their identity to overcome the sterilisation restriction owing to a three decade old order of the Madhya Pradesh government that restricted PTGs from being targeted during the sterilisation drives of the time. Sarguja: A three decade-old Madhya Pradesh government order has several adivasi families in Chattisgarh in a quandary. They struggle to provide for themselves but are turned away by government officials if they try to restrict their family size. “I do not want more children but the ‘mitanin’ (village … Continue reading Sterile ban
Vikas Kumar, a college student from near Patriatu in Jharkhand, made an unsuccessful attempt to ride his motorcycle through the blockade at Nagri. “Today [Monday] is the last date to submit my MBA admission form,” he pleaded with the adivasi children half his height who stood in the way with sticks in their hands. “Show us proof,” demanded Nishant Topo, a student of Class VII from a village school nearby. Nagri, a tribal village 15 km north of Ranchi, has been on the boil since this past July. On Monday the tribals declared an eight-hour bandh and blocked the roads … Continue reading “Sarkar ko taqleef milega”
