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Dear Reader,
Voiceless and marginalised tribals, dwelling in remote areas, are usually soft targets of the state’s excesses. Janchowk reports from Anjedbeda village, close to Jharkhand's West Singhbhum, where innocent tribals were allegedly assaulted, a minor girl molested, and their houses vandalised, during a search operation by security forces on November 11.
The violence, sketchily reported in the local media, came to light when a fact-finding mission of civil society organisations and activists visited the site and submitted a report to Singhbhum’s deputy commissioner and superintendent of police last week. The report demanded that an FIR be filed against the violators, and immediate action be taken against the alleged molesters.
In neighbouring Bihar, in 2006, the government abolished the mandi system for the procurement of wheat and established the Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACS) in each panchayat. The PACS were mandated to buy wheat from the farmers at a government-stipulated MSP. In practice though, as मैं मीडिया finds, not only are farmers short-changed and cheated by the PACS but many of them are unaware of the scheme’s modalities.
Down South, in Kerala, post-matric scholarships for students from the backward communities (shared sixty-forty between the Centre and the state) have not been disbursed by the state government for at least the last seven months. This is even though the Centre has transferred its share of the monies. Keraleeyam Masika reports on how this lapse has severely disrupted the students’ studies.
And, MediaNama analyses the new ‘guidelines for online reviews’ for e-commerce platforms introduced by the government, in partnership with the Bureau of Indian Standards, in a bid to curb deceptive and fake reviews.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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