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Journalism of Courage
On Raksha Bandhan, President Droupadi Murmu invited children from one of India’s most primitive and vulnerable tribes — the Van Raji tribe from Uttarakhand’s Pithoragarh, mostly settled in villages of Kumaon Himalayas, many of them still cave-dwellers. The group of schoolchildren had come from Doon Sanskriti School in Dehradun, an exclusive school for children from tribal communities inaugurated in 2004 by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Children from tribal communities in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Mizoram also attended the celebrations at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
When Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary Manoj Joshi was getting ready to make a presentation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi on one of the ministry’s ongoing projects a few months ago, the ministry got a message from the PMO saying that they did not want the usual kind of presentation. The PM wanted satellite and drone imagery to show progress on the site, Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Puri said on Thursday. This approach, he said, was different from earlier governments, where even roads were “made (only) on paper”.
MoS for Social Justice and Empowerment, Ramdas Athawale, had a packed schedule for the two days of Raksha Bandhan. On Thursday, members of the transgender community visited his residence in Mumbai and tied rakhis. Transgender rights and schemes for the community are an important segment of the Social Justice Ministry, and aides close to the minister say Athawale wanted members of the community to feel included on the occasion. On Wednesday, Athawale went to ‘Gadar 2’ director Anil Sharma’s office to congratulate him on the success of his film.
