THE draft of the New Education Policy(NEP) is profoundly regressive and overwhelmingly undemocratic. It continues to perpetuate the existing discrimination against the disabled. It fails to invoke a rights-based approach and refuses to break away from the traditional method of viewing disability.Despite ‘access’ being claimed to be a key “guiding principle”, non-availability of the draft in accessible formats, deprives large sections of the disabled an opportunity to go through a crucial document that will be shaping their lives and those of disabled children and adolescents.

THE persecutions reported against dalits, under the rule of Narendra Modi, are on the rise in India, establishing a similar scenario to the earlier regimes of the BJP government in the history of independent India.

ON December 20, thousands of activists of Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch (DSMM) marched through the streets of Delhi and held a protest demonstration at the Parliament Street. They gave a clarion call to defeat “Manuvadi BJP” in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections to defend dalit rights and to save the constitution.K Radhakrishnan, president, DSMM and former speaker of Kerala assembly termed the Modi led BJP government anti-Dalit and said four and half years have passed but this government did not take a single step to deliver justice to the dalit community of the country.

LENIN Sarani in Kolkata has been a witness to many hues of gatherings, but on December 3, the occasion of international day for disabled persons, it had witnessed a procession which had not been seen in the city for a long time. As the wave of yellow surged towards its destination, the bustling metropolis came to a standstill to take note of the faces of the participants.The spirit of the procession was succinctly embodied by the action of an anonymous participant. While marching forward, his crutch gave way and he fell down on the dusty thoroughfare.

WHEN questioned about Maratha reservations, Nitin Gadkari, cabinet minister in the present union government and also former president of the BJP, posed a counter question: “Where are the jobs”? Before posing this question, he actually started it by saying: “But there are no jobs. Because in banks, the jobs have shrunk because of IT. The government recruitment is frozen”. If the same words come out of our mouth’s, all of us would have been by now branded as ‘anti-nationals’ and what not. As the saying goes, the truth has come out of the ‘horse’s mouth’.