Despite sustained campaigns and legalchanges, convictions have declined steadily From the near-illegible notes scrawled by investigators at the Prasad Nagar police station, we know this: ever since 2005, the young woman who walked in through their doors last month had been stalked by her brother-in-law, given flowers and chocolate and beatings. There was the time, a bottle of rat-poison in his hand, he threatened to kill himself if she did not declare...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can be devastatingly polite: when Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari, who has a commercial interest in agriculture, wrote him a doomsday letter on the dire state of agriculture under UPA rule, Dr. Singh took a month to reply, but when he did, it was to tell the BJP president in excruciating detail about the rise in agricultural production during his tenure in office, which compares...

Mao Zedong's only living grandson has suggested that the ideas of China's Great Helmsman were being misused by groups such as the Maoists in India, who were invoking his image to wage violence against the state. The greater relevance of Mao's philosophy in today's world was “to help maintain peace, stability and development” and create a more equitable global order, he said, suggesting that the former Chairman's ideas of “people's war”...

-WFS   Pamela Philipose meets three tribal women who changed the course of their lives through sheer grit and determination, despite their circumstances Kaushal Markam’s experiences are not unusual. When she managed to get a job card entitling her to work on one of the government-run worksites under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), she was delighted.  Money was always in short supply, and this 35-year-old Baiga tribal woman of Dongaria...

In India's western state of Maharashtra, a project supported by Japan International Cooperation Agency is yielding better incomes for farmers and has lured the migrants back to their native villages. PROJECT: RURAL DEVELOPMENT FOR POVERTY REDUCTION PERIOD: 2008-2011 Vishwanath Gangaram Malpote, 28, is in the midst of a robust harvest. As he weeds his rice field, one cannot but help admire his meticulous effort to pluck off the small undergrowth from the standing...