S VISWANATHAN-Frontline

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A PROTEST BY medical students in New Delhi in May 2006 against the government proposal to make 50 per cent reservation for backward classes in the education sector and in government jobs. The anti-reservation protests that year went on for weeks, but the government came up with the Central Educational Institution (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006, which provided reservation in the institutions of higher learning.-KAMAL NARANG

Lesser citizens

THE first 25 years of Frontline covered a turbulent period in the political, economic and social histories of the country. The period witnessed severa

A. Soundararajan, honorary president of the Hyundai Motor India Employees Union, being arrested during a protest by employees of the company, in Chennai on May 6.-R. SENTHIL KUMAR/PTI

Advantage union

ONE of the arguments in support of foreign direct investment (FDI) put forth by the advocates of neoliberal economic policies is that it will speed up

AT PERIAKAAPPAN KULAM village in Cuddalore district, Dalit families bury their dead in the compounds of their houses, as in this picture. Dalits have been denied access to the burial ground by caste Hindus who have encroached on the land. Over 100 bodies have been buried and about 50 cremated within the Dalit colony in the past 20 years.-POORVACHANDRAN

Cracks in the wall

WE have now learnt virtually to live with the dead. This statement by an elderly woman of Periakaappan Kulam village in Vriddachalam taluk of Cuddalor

Courting trouble

Losing ground

S. VISWANATHAN in Coimbatore, T.K. RAJALAKSHMI In Gurgaon & LYLA BAVADAM in Surat

On Elliots Beach, Chennai, after the December 26, 2004, tsunami washed away fish workers' huts on the shore.-THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY

Homeless still

FOUR years after the December 26 tsunami brought death and destruction of an unprecedented magnitude to at least three States and two Union Territorie

CPI(M) members led by the partys State Secretary, N. Varadarajan, in Dindigul on November 2, 2007, demanding a committee to look into exclusive reservation for Arunthathiyars.-G. KARTHIKEYAN

Separate slice

ON November 28, 2008, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi announced that the State Cabinet had accepted in principle the report of the one-man co

K.V. SRINIVASAN

Caste on campus

The caste-based violence involving two student groups on the law college campus in Chennai and related developments call for close scrutiny.

At the Rehearsal of the Chennai Kalai Kuzhu's play 'Payanam', which deals with the migration of landless agricultural labourers to towns.-S. THANTHONI

Drama of life

The Chennai Kalai Kuzhu, now in its 25th year, introduced political theatre in Tamil Nadu in the form of street plays.

P. Ramamurti had unflinching faith in secularism and social justice.-THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY

Fighter all the way

P. Ramamurti, whose birth centenary is observed this year, spent all his life for workers rights and social justice.

T.K. Rangarajan (centre), CPI(M) central committee member, and K. Balakrishnan, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Vivasayigal Sangam, with M. Kalaichelvan, the panchayat president who was injured in the police action at Rettanai in Villupuram district.-C. VENKATACHALAPATHY

Rural resistance

Tamil Nadu: Workers employed under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in the State protest against reduced minimum wages.

Some members of the 30 Dalit families who on August 4 resumed cultivation on the land allotted to them, at Ittikkal Agaram village.-PHOTOGRAPHS: V. AYYAPPA

A land struggle

For the Dalits of Ittikkal Agaram, Tamil Nadu, trying to cultivate the land allotted to them has been a struggle against caste-Hindu hostility.

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