Nahrani, a 38-year-old in Lalitpur, a village 30km from Jhansi, has an all-too-familiar tale to tell: a recently deceased husband; the lack of a ration card which promises access to free or inexpensive food; and a village without water, power, schools or health centres. Not one child from the 50-odd families in this village goes to school. The menfolk are perennially drifting, looking for jobs. And no one has heard...

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...

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...

  Democratic political systems in every advanced western country have faced challenges posed by the role of political finance or money spent during elections. On the basis of their specific experiences, these countries have tried to tackle the issue of political funding during polls. The democratic political system is corrupted if elections are contested on the basis of financial resources provided by rich individuals or business corporations as these donors, from the...

Not a quota within quota but a commitment to social justice and a proactive offer to field women from the subaltern strata. That is the way to silence the opponents of the Bill.  Fourteen years and one small victory later, the Women's Reservation Bill has again begun to look iffy. In all this time, a lot many things could have been done independent of the fate of the Bill. Those in...