[Via Dr. B. Ravichandran] The Scourge of Scavenging: Revisiting the Question of Sanitation/Scavenging/ScavengersDate: 08-Nov-2017 to 10-Nov-2017Event Type: National SeminarVenue of Event: Seminar Hall, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies.Last date for abstract: August 15th 2017 Concept Note India has been consistently critiqued, locally and globally, for its inability to ban the inhuman practice of manually …
ಮೋದಿಯ ನಾಡಲ್ಲಿ ಸಫಾಯಿ ಕರ್ಮಕಾಂಡಗಳ ಜಾಡು ಹಿಡಿದು….
ಮಂಜುನಾಥ ನರಗುಂದ (Manjunath Naragund) ಭಿನಾ ಸುಮಾರು 55 ವರ್ಷದ ದಲಿತ ಸಮುದಾಯದ ಡೋಮ ಜಾತಿಗೆ ಸೇರಿದ ವಿಧವೆ, ಕಳೆದ 30 ವರ್ಷಗಳಿಂದ ಬನಾರಸ್ ಹಿಂದೂ ವಿಶ್ವವಿದ್ಯಾಲಯದ ಹತ್ತಿರವಿರುವ ಸುಂದರಪುರ್ ಪ್ರದೇಶದಲ್ಲಿ ಸಫಾಯಿ ಕರ್ಮಚಾರಿಯಾಗಿ ಕಾರ್ಯ ನಿರ್ವಹಿಸುತ್ತಿದ್ದಾಳೆ.ಭಿನಾಳಂತೆ ಈ ಪ್ರದೇಶದಲ್ಲಿ ಇದೆ ಜಾತಿಗೆ ಸೇರಿದ ಸುಮಾರು 200ಕ್ಕೂ ಹೆಚ್ಚು ದಲಿತ ಸಮುದಾಯದ ಜನರು ನೆಲೆಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ.ಭಿನಾ ಪ್ರತಿದಿನ ಒಂದೊಂದು ಪ್ರದೇಶವೆಂಬಂತೆ ಬೆಳಗಿನ 6ಗಂಟೆಯಿಂದ ಮದ್ಯಾಹ್ನ 2 ಅಥವಾ 4ಗಂಟೆಯವರೆಗೆ ವಾರಣಾಸಿಯನ್ನು ಚೊಕ್ಕವಾಗಿಡುವಲ್ಲಿ ದಿನವಿಡಿ ಶ್ರಮವಹಿಸಿ ದುಡಿಯುತ್ತಾಳೆ.ಇವಳ ಈ …
Casteless kitchens of casteist households
Abul Kalam Azad “Caste is not just a division of labour, it is a division of labourers” ~ B. R. Ambedkar Recently, a big revelation penetrated the national media with considerable sensationalism – according to the results of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS-2), the largest pan-Indian non-government household survey, which involved surveyors asking …
Untouched brooms and tin plates!
Amritha Mohankumar All I have been hearing and watching around me is the talk of brooms. But in the midst of all this talk, I was left wondering: did I actually miss seeing those brooms or hearing their sound sweeping the ground? Or was I just so obsessed with my understanding of who would be …
Manual Scavenging at JNU
Chennai based Forum Against Manual Scavenging (FAMS), who can be contacted at famschennai@gmail.com A documentary, ‘Sahar se Pehle’ (Before the Dawn), on sanitation workers in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus in New Delhi was made by few students of the university. The JNUSU has been consistently raising the issue of abysmally bad condition of …
The Unclean Politics behind Swachh Bharat
Ravi Chandran The Swachh Bharat (Clean India) campaign has raised a few critiques questioning the credibility of the campaign. Most of the debates are responses to the pictures where Mr. Narendra Modi is shown holding a broom and posing for pictures. This article is a small response to the proposed programme. Brief Outline The …
Dalit and Adivasi Women Warriors Question Caste and Gender Oppression
Sujatha Surepally (Impressions from the first National Dalit and Adivasi Women’s Congress held on February 15-16, 2013, at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai) We live in nature! We die in Nature! It’s our life, if you occupy our land where should we go and how do we live? Whose land is this? The …
European Parliament adopts historic resolution on Dalits
International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) Press release A strongly worded resolution on caste discrimination in India was debated and adopted today by the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The Parliament condemned the high number of atrocities committed against Dalits in India and the Indian government’s insufficient action on the issue of caste discrimination. Copenhagen (IDSN), …
Hazardous sanitation work claims two more lives in Chennai
Two more people died today in the sewers trying to keep Chennai clean. How many more sanitation workers will have to give up their lives before our cities make their working conditions more human and safe? M. Narayanan, Editor of Paadam, writes about the tragedy. M. Narayanan Today, two people lost their lives in the manhole …