A body, with AK-47 and hearing aid beside, found in West Bengal Communist Party of India (Maoist) Polit Bureau member Koteshwara Rao alias Kishenji, who has been spearheading Maoist operations in West Bengal's Jangalmahal region, is suspected to have been killed in an encounter in the Burisole forest area in Paschim Medinipur district on Thursday. “A body was found with an AK-47 and a hearing aid beside. We suspect that the AK-47...

We have five million children in the labour market, say official figures. Their actual numbers may be four times as many. As a nation, we have failed each one of them…   Millions of our children still labour today, in factories, farms, kilns, mines, homes and city waste dumps, when they should be in school or in a playground. We profoundly fail these children, collectively depriving them of education, play, rest, healthy...

An unprecedented economic growth during the last decade has also seen increasing malnutrition, hunger and starvation amongst certain sections of society. India ranks 66 in the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) World Hunger Index of 88 countries (Inter-national Food Policy Research Institute). More than 200 million people in this country are denied the right to food. One-third of all underweight children (57 million) in the world due to lack of...

-The Indian Express   Narendra Modi government has justified before the Supreme Court its ongoing probe against social activist Teesta Setalvad in a case of alleged illegal exhuming of bodies of 2002 Gujarat riot victims, saying that she actually planned and executed digging of graves without permission in 2006. In an affidavit, the Gujarat government claimed that during the investigations involving the accused, including her one time close aide Rai Khan Pathan, and...

How do you quantify happiness in a diverse nation like ours? Growth levels, value-based structural changes, what can affect it? Life is Elsewhere?     Bhutan’s GNH: Based on the Buddhist doctrine of harmony with environment and fellow beings besides material comfort     UNDP Human Development Report: Ranks nations on quality of life—adjusted real income, life expectancy, education etc     World Values Survey: Started in 1995, it explores impact of social and political changes...