Union minister for consumer affairs, food and public distribution KV Thomas tells Nitin Sethi that it makes better sense to distribute stocked foodgrain to people of the country than subsidise exports. Possible spread of drought that the government is looking at... At the moment, monsoon rainfall is 23% below the long term average. But we have to wait another 15 days to know the full situation. We had discussion in the presence...

-PTI Notwithstanding the tag of being a Naxal hotbed, tribals in this east Maharashtra district have shown the way to the rest by treating girls with love and dignity and not resorting to unethical practises like female foeticide. Even as the instances of female foeticide and conducting sex determination tests are rampant in some parts of the state, Gadchiroli is by and large an exception. As is evident in the 2011 census figures,...

-PTI Yet again confirming the prevalence of child marriages in India, a new health survey has revealed that more boys than girls are getting married before the legal age of 21 years. The survey has also revealed that every fourth girl marrying in rural Rajasthan and every fifth in Bihar and Jharkhand are below the legal age of 18 years. The Mean age at marriage of females varies from 19.7 in Rajasthan to...

-Kafila.org Almost a century ago, Katherine Mayo published a book titled ‘Mother India’ that criticized the Indian way of living, and Rudyard Kipling  spoke of the ‘White Man’s Burden’. These writings reflected the colonial perspective that what colonizers did was in the best interest of the colonized people. Consequently, most well-meaning citizens of colonial powers were alienated from the horrible plight of the colonized. Purpose well served – unopposed exploitation. Years later,...

Census 2011 data bring into the open Maharashtra’s terrible record in sex-selective abortions. In early June, Vijaymala Patekar, a mother of four girls, haemorrhaged to death at a hospital in Parli, Beed district, Maharashtra. She was reportedly in her second trimester of pregnancy. Her family had allegedly forced her to abort the foetus when they learnt it was a girl child. Sudam Munde, the doctor who performed the procedure, fled Parli but...