India’s population of 1.2 billion, according to the 2011 decennial census, is growing at the century’s slowest rate of 17.6 per cent — four percentage points lower than in the previous decade. India is approaching, but has not yet reached, the replacement level. This means India’s population will stabilise somewhere between 1.5 billion and 1.6 billion by 2030, making it the world’s most populous country. It is hard to discern...

The population of India’s commercial capital is growing very slowly in the suburbs while it is shrinking in the old city, the preliminary census data on Maharashtra released on Friday shows. Meanwhile, the population of adjoining Thane district has grown explosively at 35.9% between 2001 and 2011, as expensive real estate in the city has pushed people to satellite towns such as Kalyan and Vashi in this district. The shift in people...

We come to know about gender discrimination only through the media. Our knowledge about latest global or local gender reports is also media-dependent. But what do we know about the media’s own record of allowing space for women’s voice? The good news is that the Mass Media is beginning to come under the scanner on this count but the bad news is that the media’s own record is quite dismal. A...

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...

THIRTY-EIGHT years ago, Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse working at the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, was sexually assaulted and strangled by a sweeper. The attack caused severe brain damage and left Aruna in a persistent vegetative state. The former nurse is looked after by a team of doctors and nurses at KEM. According to several reports, Aruna cannot move or see. She just lies in a comatose state in...