The government of India's Assam state, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is facing public criticism online after it announced it will create 55,000 public jobs in the next six months. While unemployment has long been a vital concern in rural Assam, past scandals in public recruitment have driven citizens to doubt authorities will fulfil that promise, while others wonder whether the measure isn't just a gimmick ahead of the state assembly's elections due on April 2021. The decision on th

The recent attack on six boys from the Bengali community in Shillong has reignited the “native” versus “outsiders” debate in the Indian state of Meghalaya. The deeply entrenched idea that only indigenous people — known as “tribals’ — should have rights to stay, own land or secure good jobs there is contributing to the marginalisation of people who aren't originally from the area. A hilly state whose name means “the abode of clouds” in Sanskrit, Meghalaya is an epicentre for many of North East I

Human history is full of examples of the struggles between indigenous peoples and colonial powers. The Seediq tribe, one of the aboriginal tribes of Taiwan, has a similar history of fighting for their rights against the Japanese colonial power that occupied the island from 1895 to 1945. Today the Seediq tribe population is limited to only 8994 and their language is classified as a critically endangered language. The term “Seediq” refers to both the people and their language. The Seediq languag