-Kafila.org Almost a century ago, Katherine Mayo published a book titled ‘Mother India’ that criticized the Indian way of living, and Rudyard Kipling  spoke of the ‘White Man’s Burden’. These writings reflected the colonial perspective that what colonizers did was in the best interest of the colonized people. Consequently, most well-meaning citizens of colonial powers were alienated from the horrible plight of the colonized. Purpose well served – unopposed exploitation. Years later,...

Census 2011 data bring into the open Maharashtra’s terrible record in sex-selective abortions. In early June, Vijaymala Patekar, a mother of four girls, haemorrhaged to death at a hospital in Parli, Beed district, Maharashtra. She was reportedly in her second trimester of pregnancy. Her family had allegedly forced her to abort the foetus when they learnt it was a girl child. Sudam Munde, the doctor who performed the procedure, fled Parli but...

-The Times of India   Higher education in India should not perpetuate inequality of opportunity It's admission time again. Charming images of 'freshers' entering the campus and glossy advertisements of the universities we had never heard before hide the harsh reality of educational mortality from school to higher education. Elaborate coverage of rising cutoffs and entrance tests draw our attention to individual merit and luck. We tend to forget the overwhelming role of...

-The Indian Express   Time to take the bolder steps, bring FDI to small towns When the GDP falls below 7 per cent, we need to start worrying. When it is less than 6 per cent, we must treat it as a crisis situation. Growth models show that the robust investment rates already achieved, and twice the productivity growth achieved in the 1980s and ’90s, will get us 8 per cent growth. This...

Around two in five households in Kolkata don't have ownership or tenancy documents, while one in four live in the fear of being evicted without legal notice.  In Mumbai, 30% households don't have ownership or tenancy documents and one in five feel insecure against eviction, says the UN's Millennium Development Goals Report, 2012.  Released on Monday, the report says the most visible violation of housing rights faced by the urban poor today...