The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is facilitating the visits of representatives from several developing countries to witness India's amazing election exercise under South-South cooperation. Representatives from Lesotho, Nigeria, Malaysia and Namibia are already in India and have visited polling booths and electoral offices in various states of India including West Bengal and Karnataka. For inquiries or interviews, please contact Ms. Nandita Surendran-UNDP, phone no. +919810084776, Email: nandita.surendran@undp.org. Journalists and media...

-The Indian Express   The southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala also figure prominently in the list. The year before the Lok Sabha elections, 2013, saw communal rioting incidents in the country jumping by nearly 25 per cent, with Uttar Pradesh, which witnessed major religious clashes in Muzaffarnagar, being the worst affected with 247 incidents compared to 118 in 2012. Data from the Union home ministry (MHA) shows that states such as UP,...

-The Hindustan Times   Kokrajhar (Assam): Nearly two years after deadly ethnic riots led to more than 100 deaths and displaced over 4.5 lakh people in Kokrajhar region of Assam, fear and tension prevails. Communities - especially, the Bodos and Bengali-speaking immigrant Muslims - living in close proximity across the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District appear to be completely polarised. In the small village of Joyma a few kilometres from Gosaigaon, around 150 Bengali-speaking...

-The Hindustan Times     It is tough to hold elections in the Maoist-hit areas, also known as the Red Corridor, which include parts of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.   In these areas, holding free and fair elections is just one part of the challenge; the bigger challenge lies in getting ballot boxes, polling officials and security men safely out of the Maoist strongholds once the...

-The Times of India   NEW DELHI: Estimates say there are over 50 million of them in the country. Yet, domestic workers remain unrecognized and unaccounted for in the legal framework. Their demand for a legislation to recognize and regulate domestic work isn't new. But as India heads to the polls yet again, hardly any party raises their issues. Mostly women, domestic workers refuse to be drowned in the overarching definition "marginalized",...