THE National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD) expressed dismay at the deplorable and reprehensible manner in which the National Para Athletics Championship was conducted in Bengaluru from March 24 to 27, 2021. NPRD has written a letter to the minister for youth and sports, Kiren Rijiju, on March 25, after having been flooded with complaints of varying natures from the athletes.Originally scheduled to be held at Chennai, the venue was changed at the last minute to Bengaluru.

THE Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch, in a statement issued on September 30, has strongly condemned the brutal gangrape and murder of the young dalit woman in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh by upper caste goondas. Shockingly the  local police delayed the registration of FIR for days and she was not given adequate medical care. Finally public pressure led to her transfer to Delhi but it was too late. In a most objectionable statement, the district SP denied that she had been raped and said that her tongue had not been cut but she had bitten it herself.

THE Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch extends its support to the demand made by several dalit activists and organisations for the removal of the Manu statue in the premises of the High Court at Jaipur. This statue was placed there 31 years ago by a group of advocates who wanted to pay homage to him as a lawmaker.The DSMM, in a statement issued on July 2, said that the Manusmriti is a text that glorifies the worst forms of inequality, discrimination and oppression. It upholds birth ordained inequality and prescribes punishment based on caste and gender.

THE National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD), in a statement issued on June 16, has  congratulated the disability movement in Tamil Nadu for forcing the Tamil Nadu state government to announce an ex gratia of Rs 1000.Unlike the ex gratia announced by the union finance minister, which covers a mere 3.81 per cent of the disabled population, this ex gratia will be given to the all disabled persons who possess a disability certificate.

ON the very first day of the lockdown, March 25, a sanitation worker in Delhi, Suresh, died at a sewage treatment plant while his co-worker, Jasbir, was admitted to hospital in a critical condition.  They were not only working in extremely hazardous conditions but they were also bereft of equipment  considered essential for such work all over the world.Sanitation workers are acknowledged as being frontline warriors in the battle against Covid-19 but the reality of their caste means that this so-called recognition makes little difference to their conditions of living and social status.