They are paying the price for selective scholarship. When political forces they oppose (right wingers / capitalists) are in power, they churn out scholarly stories full of facts such as the one linked in this post about Assam. These stories remain on line even after friendly powers are back in the saddle.

As you have pointed out – their scholarly articles stops when it comes to issues such as the recent Christian or Muslim quota in TN – or the lack of data when the quota bill was passed. No adhoc-ims detected there, instead it is about judicial overreach.

Check out the excellent expose at Offstumped about the bias in the media. Remarkable effort by Yossarin !!

It is very easy to collect a group and start a round of violence in India. That is a proven route to gaining political leadership of that group and establishing a vote bank. Has been done before. Think of PMK.

How many participants in that tribal rally in assam would likely know about the exact benefits they would get if they get into the ST list? Assuming they get into the list, how many in that group would likely be able to really use the benefits – to get into a engineering or medical seat they need to complete higher secondary; to get even a class-d job in government, they need to complete SSLC. Does anyone have those numbers for this group of people?

None of this appears really new to me – as much as these are tragic. But it is interesting that the run-up to Gujarat elections is being occupied by all manner of issues. Much as the english media would like to get set on their oust-Modi campaign, there are other head-line hogging issues coming up. And those issues all come up from places they would rather not want.

How much do they criticize the government of assam for a law-and-order failure? its a congress government! Remember how the Gurjar violence was such a ‘major challenge’ to the BJP government of rajasthan?

How much do they take on the comrades in Bengal on Nandigram or Taslima? It was funny to see the channels avoid the word ‘riot’ during last wednesday ‘protests’ in calcutta. They said every thing else – ‘protests’, may be ‘violent protests’, ‘pitched battles with police’. The CNN-IBN dude on the spot – had a mallu name and mallu accent – was pretty uncomfortable even talking about it – he said ‘latent displeasure’, ‘simmering discontent’ … all of that secular indoctrinations from kerala must have gnawed on his internals { you may repeat your idea that the calcutta violence was because of bengal’s skewed BC list compared to TN; but the crowd itself did not mention that. if they wanted in to the BC list, i would expect them to riot with that demand – not burn effigies of taslima }

The ELM would all really wish for a round of peace and quiet so they can get back more effectively to the business of Modi