News & Politics

By Ninglun Hanghal Delhi (WFS) – Moving images and stories of tired and anxious families, crossing over from Hungary into Austria and Germany, have occupied the front page of newspapers, hogged air time and gone viral online over the last few days. In fact, according to media reports, the world is facing the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, ...

[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 after marriage, she decided to take up this work to lend support to her plumber husband ...

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara|New Internationalist] It’s been a nasty, brutish week. On the heels of 2 little girls being raped, India awoke to another horror story: just outside Delhi, 2 Dalit children, aged 9 months and 2.5 years, were cold-bloodedly burnt to death in a ghastly tale of revenge and caste hatred. To settle scores from an older feud, some ...

[By Shashi Tharoor] NEW DELHI – Of the many economic reforms crying out for immediate implementation in India, the most obvious is the long-pending Goods and Services Tax. So why have India’s politicians failed to enact it? The need for a GST is virtually indisputable. As the billionaire Steve Forbes recently wrote in his eponymous magazine, “Outsiders are amazed that ...

[By Narendra Kaushik] New Delhi: When Bal Keshav Thackeray nee Bal Thackeray launched Shiv Sena in 1966 through a massive rally in Shivaji Park he had several things going for him. There was anger simmering against what Thackeray then called ‘Yandugunduwalas and lungiwalas’ (read South Indians) who dominated in white collar jobs over ‘Marathi manoos’ in the megalopolis. Thackeray himself had built ...

[By Narendra Kaushik] “Don’t soldiers die every day on the border or in Jammu & Kashmir? Does anybody talk about their deaths? Why then make a mountain out of Akhlaq’s death?” asks Rajiv Kasana, a youth in Shahpur, a Gurjar village neighbouring Bishara, angrily accusing the media and Samajwadi Party of building tension in the region. Mohammad Akhlaq (50) was ...

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara] Last week there was an uproar from the Indian human rights lobby in general and women’s groups in particular when news broke about the abuse of 2 Nepali women used as sex slaves by a Saudi diplomat stationed in New Delhi. The women, who had originally been promised employment as maids, had been imprisoned in the ...

[By Shashi Tharoor] NEW YORK – As world leaders prepare to gather next week at the United Nations in New York to ratify the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and commemorate the UN’s 70th anniversary, for many a fundamental question has become inescapable. Grounds for pessimism are undeniable. Conflicts rage on, seemingly unaffected by upholders of world order. Despite more ...

[Sneha Krishnan|The Conversation] Heavy flooding has affected more than a million people in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, with 45 dead and more than 200,000 in relief camps. And yet there is still very little coverage of the disaster in the international media – perhaps not surprising when you consider even most Indians aren’t paying attention. But they should ...

[By Narendra Kaushik] It was sometime in February 1998. A pale orange sun was going down behind the white clouds opposite Barauni Oil Refinery.  Our ambassador car driver had just returned after unsuccessfully scouting for a mechanic in nearby cities to fix the vehicle’s broken axle. We, four journalists, were haggling with the driver on the roadside for the return ...