-The Economic Times For many, it is a sense of deja vu. Fifteen years ago, the government and India's financial regulators came under fire after hundreds of crores were cleaned up by a few individuals and entities from gullible investors, who were promised fabulous returns from plantation schemes. In the uproar that followed, the government and the regulators sought to palm off the responsibility of regulation of such schemes on each...

-The Hindu The Delhi bus rape has galvanised the country on the neglected issue of women’s safety. A look at several cities shows the need for large scale reform – of the police, the law, the legal process, and security in public places. One thought, one hoped, it would not happen in this case but most unfortunately, it did. In all the outrage, the outpouring of horror, grief and anger, that devastating...

-The Hindustan Times Two years ago, nine-year-old Vishal got beaten up real bad by the class bullies at the government school in Lal Kuan in south Delhi. The bullies also tore up some of his school texts and threw away others. After that day, a petrified Vishal just couldn’t muster up enough courage to go back to school. Worse still, he couldn’t tell his parents — Radhe Shyam and Manju — about...

The district administration's plan of giving priorities to digging of wells under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has started bearing fruits. The scheme has brought smiles to hundreds of farmers across the district. Official records show that the farmers have doubled their income by growing crops in about 7,200 acres in all seasons. Many farmers like Mahli Oraon at Rampur village of Sadar block shared their success...

HETA, India – At the entrance to this village in India’s eastern state of Jharkhand, a large pond glistened under the bright autumn sun. Yellow and blue lilies surrounded it. A tailor was stitching clothes outside his shop while a few boys nearby were playing carrom on the lid of a rusted oil barrel. It was a tranquil, rustic setting – a candidate for a landscape painting, it seemed. But it...