By Sunil Kumar*  Bihar has long been a “labour-exporting” state—during colonial rule and after Independence. Bihari workers have travelled far and wide, within India and overseas, selling their labour to survive. Today, their numbers in the Middle East have grown substantially. Within India too, a disproportionate share of workers killed in industrial accidents come from Bihar. This is why migration emerged as a major issue in the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections, prompting the government to announce measures to curb out-migration from the state.

By Martin Macwan*  It was the year 1865. Nearly one-third of the land area of what we now know as the UK—the “United Kingdom”—was the country called Scotland. In Scotland, there were two main means of livelihood for the poor: fishing and agricultural labor.

By Palla Trinadha Rao   The question “Who is an Adivasi?” lacks a precise, definitive answer within India's administrative and constitutional framework. Terms like Adivasi, Girijan, Vanavasi, Moolvasi, and Indigenous are common in public debate, political rhetoric, and activism. Yet the Constitution provides no explicit definition for any of them. Even the official legal category—Scheduled Tribes (ST)—lacks detailed constitutional explanation or fixed criteria.

By Syed Ali Mujtaba*  Tamil Nadu is set to go to the polls in April 2026, and the political battle lines are beginning to take shape. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the state on January 23, 2026, marked the formal launch of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign against the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Addressing multiple public meetings, the Prime Minister accused the DMK government of corruption, criminality, and dynastic politics, and called for Tamil Nadu to be “freed from DMK’s chains.” PM Modi alleged that the DMK had turned Tamil Nadu into a drug-ridden state and betrayed public trust by governing through what he described as “Corruption, Mafia and Crime,” derisively terming it “CMC rule.” He claimed that despite making numerous promises, the DMK had failed to deliver meaningful development. He also targeted what he described as the party’s dynastic character, arguing that the government functioned primarily for the benefit of a single family a...

By Ipshita Basu, Sudheesh R.C.  In the early hours of July 30 2024, a landslide in the Wayanad district of Kerala state, India, killed 400 people. The Punjirimattom, Mundakkai, Vellarimala and Chooralmala villages in the Western Ghats mountain range turned into a dystopian rubble of uprooted trees and debris.

By Nabil Abdul Majeed, Nitheesh Narayanan   In 1945, two years prior to India's independence, the current Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, was born into a working-class family in northern Kerala. He was his mother’s fourteenth child; of the thirteen siblings born before him, only two survived. His mother was an agricultural labourer and his father a toddy tapper. They belonged to a downtrodden caste, deemed untouchable under the Indian caste system.

By Atanu Roy*  A recent visit to a government-aided Bengali-medium school in Birbhum district of West Bengal proved to be an unsettling experience. Conversations with students from primary and secondary classes revealed significant gaps in language proficiency and basic computing skills, far below what should reasonably be expected at those levels. What initially appeared to be an isolated problem soon pointed to a deeper structural issue within the state’s school education system.

By Sudhir Katiyar, Mallica Patel*  The sudden dismantling of MGNREGA once again exposes the limits of progressive legislation in the absence of transformation of a casteist, semi-feudal rural society. Over two days in the winter session, the Modi government dismantled one of the most progressive legislations of the UPA regime—the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

By Dr Jayant Kumar*  Rural employment programmes have played a pivotal role in shaping India’s socio-economic landscape . Beyond providing income security to vulnerable households, they have contributed to asset creation, village development, and social stability. However, persistent challenges—such as seasonal unemployment, income volatility, administrative inefficiencies, and corruption—have limited the transformative potential of earlier schemes.