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  • Why UP is a fertile ground for crime against women?

    |By Narendra Kaushik| The sordid saga of assaults on women in Uttar Pradesh continues unabated.  Here is what makes the state fertile ground for crime against women: ...

  • Could a meteorite really have killed a bus driver in India?

    [Monica Grady] There is nothing more certain in life than death – a cheerful thought for a dismal February. Even though we are aware of that inevitability, we don’t expect death literally to strike out of an empty sky, which reportedly is what happen...

  • Innocence lost – A story of Delhi’s child campaigners

    It was the last day of the political campaigning. Road shows and rallies galore, the National Capital was charged up and chaotic; scenes of traffic jams, processions, and policemen all over set the tone for the elections. After all, what else do you ...

  • Public Safety Is Every Woman’s Human Right

    [By Rakhi Ghosh] Khurda – She is a hardworking government school teacher and an attentive mother and wife today but she has been through her fair share of hell. The incident that changed Seema’s (name changed) life forever happened over 17 years ago ...

  • Don’t Hesitate to help Road Accident Victims: Government stands by The Good Samaritan

    Good Samaritans or people who help road accident victims by taking them to the hospital had everything going against them from legal wrangles to harassment.Thanks to the Supreme Court directive, the Government has finally notified guidelines to prote...

  • Why women home-based workers are bargaining for better rights and protection

    [By Shalini Sinha|WFS] Delhi – Fatima is a whiz with the needle and thread. She has been doing intricate embroideries since she was very young, having learnt the skill from her mother and aunts in her hometown in eastern India. When she came to Delhi...

  • Exit polls , enter bookies

    |By Sanjay Pandey| If the exit poll projections are to be believed, the Modi wave – brewing since the announcement of BJP’s prime ministerial candidate last September and turning into a ‘tsunami’ of sorts for the rival parties in the run-up to ...

  • The Indian elections: what does “the Gujarat Model” really mean?

    By Rohini Hensman Narendra Modi, whom some consider a human rights criminal, is running for PM of India and being touted as an economic saviour based on his record in Gujarat. An analysis of these claims reveals a version of corporation-driven neolib...

  • India’s Cow Vigilantes

    [By Shashi Tharoor] NEW DELHI – Indian politics continues to amaze and appall. The surge in cow vigilantism – a uniquely Indian phenomenon that has lately begun to flourish under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government – is no exception. Many ort...

India and Pakistan fought 3 wars over Kashmir – here’s why international law and US help can’t solve this territorial dispute

The scene in Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir, after an Aug. 10, 2021, grenade attack by militants that wounded at least nine civilians. Kashmir has experienced sporadic violence for more than seven decades, including three wars. Yawar Nazir/Getty Images Bulbul Ahmed, Bangladesh University of Professionals An armed conflict in Kashmir has thwarted all attempts to solve it for three quarters of ...

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How Mumbai’s poorest neighbourhood is battling to keep coronavirus at bay

Ishita Chatterjee, University of Melbourne | The Conversation Informal settlements are experiencing a greater surge in COVID-19 cases than other urban neighbourhoods in Mumbai, India. Their high density, narrow streets, tight internal spaces, poor access to water and sanitation leave residents highly vulnerable to the spread of coronavirus. One of Mumbai’s poorest and most underdeveloped neighbourhoods, Shivaji Nagar, is one of three ...

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Exit Polls: Effects on Indian Polity

By Col N N Bhatia(Retd) Both politicians and the nappies need to be changed often and for the same reason! Margret Thatcher The world’s largest democracy has just finished the polling for the general elections lasting over 2 months. The entire country of India’s size and diversity, the election mania had a vice like grip over the world’s other events. ...

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Live: Elections 2017

Most exit polls forecast a saffron Holi in Uttar Pradesh and a close fight between the Congress seeking to return to power in Punjab and AAP, a debutant in Punjab elections. Stay with us for LIVE updates on Assembly Elections 2017.

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Fan of Rudyard Kipling? Then you should read the hundreds of other stories he wrote

[By Sarah Lonsdale] Sixteen-year-old Rudyard Kipling returned to India after a miserable childhood, and slightly less miserable adolescence in England, to take up the perfect job for a precociously gifted but possibly unemployable son of empire. He was to be 50% of the editorial staff – as he describes in his memoir Something of Myself – of the Civil and ...

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India’s Cow Vigilantes

[By Shashi Tharoor] NEW DELHI – Indian politics continues to amaze and appall. The surge in cow vigilantism – a uniquely Indian phenomenon that has lately begun to flourish under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government – is no exception. Many orthodox Hindus, particularly in the northern Indian states that comprise the so-called Cow Belt, worship the cow as gau ...

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From Kashmir and Chilcot to Black Lives Matter

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara| New Internationalist] Mob throws police jeep into river. One cop dead. My first reaction was, another US story about the eruption of violence post-the Black Lives Matter protests. But no. This was the morning’s headlines in a Bangalore newspaper and the cop killed by the mob was in Kashmir. Ironically, yesterday’s headlines were about an historic new ...

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India’s Jewel in the Crown

|By Shashi Tharoor| NEW DELHI – India’s Solicitor-General, Ranjit Kumar, recently declared that India would not seek the return of the Kohinoor diamond – one of the world’s oldest and most valuable – from the British, to whom India had “gifted” it. The statement shocked India and unleashed passionate debate – so passionate, in fact, that the government scrambled to ...

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Bangalored: Death of a Dream

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara|New Internationalist] Once upon a time, possibly around two, definitely three decades ago, Bangalore was a charming little town. It was known as the pensioners’ paradise because it was a tiny town with quaint cottages and pretty bungalows surrounded by lovely gardens. And the weather was perfect. Everyone knew everyone else on their street and in their ...

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Kerala – a conflict of cultures?

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara|New Internationalist] Kerala has long been held up as an example of a model state. India’s most educated piece of paradise. But people who live there, in general, and women who live there in particular, know only too well, that the hype is merely that – hot air. The fact that this is a state with the highest ...

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