-The Times of India   Delhi continues to be the rape capital of the country, followed by Mumbai. Delhi registered 568 cases of rape, compared to 218 in Mumbai in 2011, National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics showed. In the 2007-2011 period, Delhi topped the chart, followed by Mumbai, Bhopal, Pune and Jaipur.  Among states, Maharashtra ranked fifth with 7,703 cases registered; Madhya Pradesh tops the list with 15,275, followed by West Bengal...

Past two months saw B D Sharma negotiating release of high-profile hostages by the Maoists in Odisha and Chhattisgarh. TV viewers saw and heard Sharma, probably for the first time. Widely respected in the civil society, he has been championing the rights of tribals for four decades now. He served as collector in the undivided Bastar district of Chhattisgarh in the 1970s, after which he quit the Indian Administrative Service....

-PTI A Bar Council of India (BCI) delegation today met Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal and threatened a nation-wide stir if legal education is not taken out of the purview of proposed Higher Education Research (HER) Bill.  The BCI has been opposing the HER Bill aimed at regulating the legal education system, saying it is an attempt to take away the powers of the apex lawyers' body.  At a two-hour meeting with...

Desired outcomes can be reached through a series of ‘imperfect’ small initiatives What is to be done? How can we untie the Gordian knot that has so entangled the political economy of petroleum product prices? This is the question that now exercises our most experienced politicians and our ablest economists. Most well informed people know that a country that imports 80 per cent of its oil requirements cannot de-link itself from the...

Weather conditions promoting El Nino persistent, says Met department; drought feared In its first monsoon forecast in late April, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) had announced that monsoons would be normal this year and there was a little chance of El Nino—associated with dry spells west of the Pacific—arriving in the second half of the season. But of late, IMD seems to have shifted its stand. Now the weather agency is...