Dear Reader,

In April 2023, in Delhi’s Tughlaqabad, more than two lakh people were evicted from the Bengali Colony, which abuts the 14th-century fort. The evictions allegedly happened without a survey, without notice, and without alternative provisions for those affected.

This is despite the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of India, decreeing the right to shelter as a fundamental right and forbidding evictions without following due process of law. Ironically, some of the provisions of the ‘Delhi Slum & Jhuggi-Jhopri Rehabilitation and Relocation Policy, 2015', meant to empower slum dwellers, have been used to deny rehabilitation and compensation. Article 14 looks at how a policy once seen as a boon for rehabilitation has been turned into a weapon of exclusion.

The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns sent millions of migrant workers on difficult journeys back to their homes across the country. In Kanthaliya village in West Bengal's Murshidabad district, the return of its natives provided a welcome opportunity. Once the home of a thriving traditional pottery industry, Kanthaliya had, over the years, been unable to provide living wages for workers to sustain their families—leading to outward migration.

The Migration Story reports that by leveraging the homecoming of migrants, a 30-year-old pottery cooperative has changed Kanthaliya’s fortunes. With the help of training programmes, it skilled young people in the village in new pottery techniques, helped procure furnaces and wheels, and facilitated the sale of their produce in urban markets. Five years on, the local pottery economy has been transformed, with potters earning as much or more than what they did in the city, from their homes. And, importantly, stemming the tide of migration from the village.

Every year, the United Kingdom discards 700,000 tonnes of used tyres. Around half of these make their way to India for recycling. But the factories where the tyres are processed are unclean and unsafe. An estimated 50 per cent of India's 2,000 pyrolysis plants—tyre processing factories—are unlicensed, making it difficult to regulate their emissions. The process is also heavily polluting.

Reporting from the Peelukhedi Industrial Area near Rajgarh in Madhya Pradesh, Ground Report investigates and finds pollution so rampant and toxic that residents are gasping for breath, constantly covered by a blanket of soot and dust. Factory waste has also contaminated water bodies in the area, affecting agriculture, livestock, and drinking water. Local authorities deny that they have received petitions to intervene, and have yet to move to action.

The transgender community in India is barred from donating blood. This is ostensibly because they are seen as a ‘risk for HIV’, according to ‘The Guidelines for Blood Donor Selection & Blood Donor Referral, 2017’, issued by the National Blood Transfusion Council and the National AIDS Control Organisation.

This blanket ban on blood donation by the community was challenged by Santa Khurai, a prominent transgender rights activist from Manipur, in the Supreme Court through a PIL filed in February 2021. Khurai’s challenge argued that the ban is unconstitutional, as it dehumanises entire communities without individual risk assessment. The Probe brings you the story of Santa Khurai’s long battle to seek justice for the transgender community against a ban that stigmatises and excludes marginalised groups from participating in a public good like blood donation.

For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.

Warmly,

Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF