-The Times of India Try booking a tatkal train ticket online at 8am when booking counters and the web portal open simultaneously, and you will invariably find the website hanging frequently. Do not expect the situation to improve dramatically as IRCTC, the agency that runs the site, has plainly said it cannot meet the surging demand. A GM-level IRCTC official said there were simply too many users, especially ahead of festivals and...

-The Hindu On May 5 this year, Tarun Sehrawat, a photographer with Tehelka, sent me a link to his most recent photo-essay on Abujmard, a Maoist-controlled area in Chhattisgarh. Tarun and I met on assignment in Dantewada in Summer 2010 and had stayed in touch. A month-and-half later, last Friday, I attended his funeral after a fever he contracted in Abujmard proved fatal. Tarun died of cerebral malaria; he was 22. I came...

In Maharashtra’s drought-hit Satara district, a cattle camp has come to the rescue of women and their cattle, writes Sameena Dalwai. Mann taluka in Satara district is ground zero for the drought now ravaging interior Maharashtra. The only cattle camp in the vicinity, being run by the Mann Deshi Mahila Bank and Foundation, provides a snap distress. This region, known as ‘Manndesh’ in Marathi folklore, falls in the rain shadow area...

Elders devise a system to share water among arecanut farmers Disputes over sharing of water from Bukkarayanakere were common among arecanut growers in Doddabukkasagar of Kadur taluk until around 40 years ago. A few senior citizens came together in the early 1970s and decided to resolve them forever by devising a new system, according to which water is released periodically to all farmers. Now, disputes over water are unheard of in the...

-Live Mint To maintain his constant stream of RTI petitions, Agrawal says he gets ideas from day-to-day observations, news reports, government insiders, whistle-blowers and journalists. In the Summer of 1985, a cloth merchant in Chandni Chowk, the crowded market in the old quarters of Delhi, received a call in response to a letter he had written to the papers asking why his favourite weekly television serial, Rajani, could not be aired daily...