-IPS News BETUL, India- Mamta Bai, 36, distinctly remembers the first time the police came to her village: it was December 2014 and her neighbour, Purva Bai, had just been beaten unconscious by her alcoholic husband, prompting Mamta to make a distress call to the nearest station. Once in the neighborhood, policemen pulled the abusive husband out of his home and asked the village women if they wanted him to be arrested. “Yes,”...

-News Wing Daltonganj: The world may have become a global village; India too may have reached the Mars,but the lifestyle of Kharwars, the tribal people living in difficult terrains of Palamau forest who like to boast of being the kin of famous duo Nilambar-Pitambar has crawled just by an inch—they have taken to farming.This too, for the last two years. While by nature the Kharwars are fighter tribes and not adapt to...

-Deccan Herald New Delhi: The online booking system at the AIIMS has picked up pace after the administration made the option of booking available to patients through their Aadhaar numbers. The facility was launched by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences on May 7. Once the patient seeking an appointment enters the Aadhaar number or Unique Identification Number (UID), the personal details will be traced and the Unique Health Identification Number (UHID) will...

-The Hindu Vishwas has collected 68 varieties of the fruit, which he grows in his farm Hassan: For the last 10 years, this 34-year-old farmer has been on a collection spree, not of priceless artefacts, but of different varieties of jackfruit. K.C. Vishwas, a native of Mudigere, has collected and grown 68 varieties in his farm near Dudda in Hassan taluk. “I have travelled almost 1.7 lakh km in my vehicle just to...

-The Indian Express It can be strengthened —by the collection of taxes at the local level, for instance. Democratic decentralisation, conceived two decades ago, seems to be a lost cause at first sight. Beyond lip service by politicians, neither panchayats nor municipalities have captured the public imagination as viable, responsive, accountable institutions of government. Just after the Karnataka panchayat elections, which ended on June 2, the continued disempowerment of local governments is...