Women's organisations rise up against a petition that seeks an amendment to Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code. A PETITION that alleges the misuse of Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, which has been admitted by the Rajya Sabha Committee on Petitions, has become an object of concern among leading women's organisations in the country. The petition claims that the law, dealing with dowry-related torture and acute domestic...

Why are the erstwhile RTI campaigners so alarmed five years after it became law? Why so many dharnas, rallies, conventions and hunger-strikes all over again? Part of the reason is that the silent revolution that the RTI has spawned needs to be defended from surreptitious alterations and manipulations, and partly because the RTI activists are being threatened, harassed and assaulted by the corrupt and the powerful, often with the connivance...

As a new rapid diagnostic test, endorsed by the WHO, will finally help detect more people with DR-TB DR-TB medicines are very expensive Need to improve access to DR-TB drugs As a new rapid diagnostic test, endorsed by the World Health Organisation (WHO), will finally help detect more people with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB), there was need to solve problems around the pricing and supply of DR-TB medicines, according to a report by international...

Nearly a year after Tadmetla in Dantewada hit national headlines with the massacre of 76 CRPF jawans, grief-stricken villagers in Dantewada alleged that security forces burnt down more than two hundred homes, sexually assaulted a woman and took away two men on March 16. Tadmetla has been scorched and reduced to rubble by the police, they said. In detailed and gruesome accounts given to journalists, the tribals alleged that five days...

The government will certainly not indulge in self congratulation for agriculture recording a growth of 5.4 per cent to 232.07 million tonnes in 2010-11 as this is happening on a low production base of 218.11 million tonnes last year when the country experienced the worst south-west monsoon since 1972. In fact, the major concern of the government is farm sector’s niggardly growth of 2.8 per cent in the first four...