For nearly three decades, Selvi V. has lived in a village in the Kanchipuram district of Tamil Nadu, 75km from Chennai, without a toilet. And there really wasn’t any need felt to have one in this family of daily wage farm labourers. Selvi and her now-married daughter would wake up either early every morning or wait until dark to relieve themselves in a thicket of thorny shrubs a little distance...

By the end of the third day (i.e. 11th April, 2010) of the The Independent People’s Tribunal that took place at Constitutional Club between 9 and 11 April, 2010, Retired Supreme Court judge Justice Sawant, while concluding, said that participatory democracy has been lacking in India. Democracy can never be equated with elections only. The jury during the 3-day long People’s Tribunal heard the testimonies of a large number of...

For decades the sprawling state of Bihar, flat and scorching as a griddle, was something between a punch line and a cautionary tale, the exact opposite of the high-tech, rapidly growing, rising global power India has sought to become. Criminals could count on the police for protection, not prosecution. Highwaymen ruled the shredded roads and kidnapping was one of the state’s most profitable businesses. Violence raged between Muslims and Hindus, between...

The United Nations has launched a worldwide campaign to enhance the safety of 1 million schools and hospitals, where poor construction, an absence of safety drills and lack of emergency equipment can lead to the highest death tolls during earthquakes and other disasters. “Making sure that schools, hospitals and other key public infrastructure meet certain safety standards are key steps to ensure that natural hazards do not turn into disasters,” Secretary-General...

With 130-140 million Indians likely to move to cities in the next decade and an equal number in the one after that, the development of urban India represents the biggest challenge you can think of -- in the next two decades, India will have to create as many new cities as it created in the last several hundred years. Alternately, the existing cities which are home to around 285 million people...