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Raja was a woodcutter who leased half an acre of land from a relative to grow cotton in Tamil Nadu’s Perambalur district. He usually sowed groundnut, but in 2017, he decided to grow cotton for the first time. On the morning of October 24, he went to the field to spray pesticides on the cotton plants which had grown 6-feet tall. He emptied 10-15 tanks of pesticide that morning and came home feeling dizzy and faint, his wife Meenakshi recalled. He vomited and had diarrhoea. At 3.30 the next morning, Raja’s family took him to a government hospital in an autorickshaw. The doctors told them Raja’s condition was extremely precarious since he had sprayed too much of pesticide. “They said it had gone up to his brain,” said Meenakshi. “They said they could not do anything.” The family then took Raja to a private hospital. He died within minutes of arrival. Nine other cotton farmers in Tamil Nadu died over the next three months in quite the same way – they accidentally inhaled toxins whi...

Many people confuse the Dalit movement with the anti-caste movement, often seeing them as one and the same thing. They forget that caste is not exclusive to Dalits. Everyone who claims to be a Hindu falls somewhere on the caste hierarchy and therefore is a part of the caste system. Dalits are at one end of this spectrum – they have experienced extreme oppression, deprivation and humiliation. But at the other end are those born in privileged families, their privilege lying in the fact that they aren’t exploited on the basis of their caste identity. Instead, they often benefit from their privileged caste status. These are the people who, thus, go on denying the existence of caste, not acknowledging the role their privilege plays in cushioning their lives. As Anupama Rao puts it, being from a privileged caste offers the “luxury” of ignorance of caste. Nobody who is a Hindu is free of caste. So how can the caste system, which has trapped the entire Hindu society in its divisive str...

Clad in a dark  shalwar kamee z, with a red ethnic   style cap on his head, Manzoor Pashteen took to the stage amid mad cheering. For many, April 22 was a regular Sunday in Lahore except the heat wasn’t as unbearable as it can be during this time of year.  But hot or not, the arena was packed. Several thousands reached the venue even before Pashteen arrived. Emerging as a huge celebrity in just a matter of a few months, Pashteen is slowly becoming somewhat of an icon in the country and is becoming known as a man who bluntly says what he wants to say. “We are here to strip the veil off the truth,” he announced into the microphone, his voice reverberating across the stadium. By now, all the cheers had stopped and a respectful silence reigned. “We will speak about all those cruelties that have been taking place in broad daylight but have been wrapped up in a blanket of darkness.” The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) or the Pashtun Protection Movement, came about in 201...

Farman Ali Updated April 26, 2018 ISLAMABAD: A court has allowed the Special Communications Organisa­tion (SCO) to operate 3G and 4G mobile services on a trial basis in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and stayed the telecom regulatory body’s decision to allow other private operators to launch the service in the mountainous region. A two-judge bench of the Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Court (GBCC) comprising Justice Haq Nawaz and Justice Muhammad Umar admitted a petition filed by the SCO, the telecommunication wing of the army, for hearing and issued notices to the respondents to submit their comments within a month. The petition, a copy of which is available with Dawn, was filed on April 18 under Article 71 of the GB Empowerment and Self-Governance Order 2009, challenging the Pakistan Telecommunication Autho­rity’s (PTA) decision of issuing licences to cellular networks for launching 3G and 4G spectrum in the mountainous region. The petitioner through its counsel Adnan Hussain made the Gil...

New Delhi |  Published: April 26, 2018 5:22 AM Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers on Wednesday agreed to merge in a deal that will create a firm with an equity value of Rs 96,500 crore ($14.6 billion). The combined entity will have the world’s second-largest number of mobile masts and in its fold more than 163,000 towers across 22 circles India — the largest after China Tower. Bharti Airtel and Vodafone will jointly control the merged entity, which will have an enterprise value of Rs 71,500 crore, the two companies said. The combined entity will be called Indus Towers and will continue to be listed on the Indian bourses. Bharti Airtel separately said it plans to engage with potential investors to evaluate a stake sale in the combined company. Bharti Airtel, which currently owns 53.5% in Bharti Infratel, will get 33.8-37.2% stake in the combined entity, as its shareholding is dependent upon what Aditya Birla Group’s Idea and private equity firm Providence do with their min...

By AFP Published: April 24, 2018 Facebook on Monday said new detection tools wielded by its counterterrorism team are quickly detecting and removing propaganda material for the Islamic State group and al Qaeda. The leading social network ‘took action’ on 1.9 million pieces of IS or al Qaeda-linked content in the first three months of this year — nearly double the amount from the previous quarter, according to vice president of global policy management Monika Bickert and global head of counterterrorism policy Brian Fishman. “Taking action,” the company said, generally involved removing “the vast majority of this content.” It “added a warning to a small portion that was shared for informational or counter speech purposes,” Bickert and Fishman said in an online post. In some cases, entire profiles, pages, or groups were taken down for violating Facebook policies, making all included content unavailable. “We’ve made significant strides finding and removing their p...

25/04/2018 12:14 PM IST A public online dashboard on a website maintained by the Andhra Pradesh government allows anyone with an internet connection to use "religion" or "caste" as a search criterion to identify the homes of 5,166,698 families in 13 districts in Andhra Pradesh. The vulnerability was first spotted by Srinivas Kodali, a security researcher. HuffPost India  is not revealing the website to protect the privacy of those listed in its database. On using the dashboard,  HuffPost India  found the precise latitude and longitude of homes inhabited by Muslim families, Dalit families, Hindu homes and even Zorastrian families. When  HuffPost India  checked back on the database, the number of families enrolled had increased, suggesting the database continually updated and the privacy implications are growing every hour. HuffPost India is not publishing the exact numbers, as this is sensitive information. Aadhaar s eeding, privacy advocates ...