Karnataka Dalit MP denied entry in Golla village, locals say he is untouchable

 In a bizarre incident in Karnataka, BJP MP from Chitradurga, A Narayanaswamy was turned away

from a village in his own constituency for hailing from a different caste. Narayanaswamy was visiting the area along with a group of doctors and officials of a pharma company.

The incident took place on Monday in Pavagada taluk of Tumkur district when Narayanaswamy took the group of doctors and Biocon officials for a tour of the area.

Narayanaswamy was humiliated by the Golla community when the group tried to enter the Gollarahatti (a place where people belonging to the Golla community lives) as he is "untouchable".

Some of the people asked Narayanaswamy to go back and not enter the village as no Dalit or lower caste members are allowed to enter the Gollarahatti. While Narayanaswamy is a Dalit, the Gollas belong to the Other Backward Class (OBC).

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discussions on EWS

In the study, published in the Economic and Political Weekly, Bheemeshwar Reddy and others show that general category EWS students are already well-represented in India’s top educational institutions. The authors analyze student data from 445 higher education institutions ranked by the National Institutional Ranking Framework of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). They find that of all the 1.6 million students enrolled in these institutions in 2016-17, 28% (455,000) belonged to the economically backward class. 

This representation is nearly three times the proposed reservation of 10% - even after using a stricter definition of economic backwardness. The authors highlight that most institutions use a cut-off ranging from  ₹2 lakh to  ₹5.5 lakh household annual income to define economic backwardness. This is far lower than the government’s reservation cut-off of  ₹8 lakh.

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A Letter to Kangana Ranaut On Caste and Reservation

 Dear Kangana,

I hope this letter finds you well. I wanted to write to you about your tweet.

On August 23, Shekhar Gupta, the founder of The Print, shared an article by journalist Dilip Mandal titled “Oprah Winfrey sent a book on caste to 100 US CEOs but Indians still won’t talk about it.’

                                                       Meena Kotwal

In a reply, you wrote: “Cast system has been rejected by modern Indians, in small towns every one knows it’s not acceptable anymore by law and order its nothing more than a sadistic pleasure for few, only our constitution is holding on to it in terms of reservations, Let Go Of It, Lets Talk About It (sic).”

You continued: “Especially in professions like Doctors engineers, pilots most deserving people suffer reservations, we as a nation suffer mediocrity and brilliance finds a reluctant escape to The United States.. Shame (sic).”

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