Features

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 ...

[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 ...

[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 ...

[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 on July 2, 1996. She had just taken up a job as a social worker, fighting for ...

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 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 ...

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara|New Internationalist] It’s Indian Independence Day on Saturday 15 August. Although this raises many questions as to what Independence means to the poor and wretched of our country, I will desist from the usual gloom and doom. Everyone needs to celebrate. And there is always a good story to gladden the heart, if you look around. I ...

[By Narendra Kaushik] New Delhi:  It was sometime in August 1998, around three months after Pokhran II, the series of five nuclear tests India conducted in the desert of Rajasthan.   Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen (popularly known as APJ) Abdul Kalam, then Chief Scientific Advisor to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Director of Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO), had already ...

Dr. Abdul Kalaam known for his love for the student community, delivered this speech at Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, where he outlined his visions for India. In 3000 years of our history, people from all over the world have come and invaded us, captured our lands, conquered our minds. From Alexander onwards, the Greeks, the Turks, the Moguls, the Portuguese, ...