The Supreme Court today directed all state governments to set up juvenile boards, child welfare committees and juvenile police units within six weeks. A bench, headed by Justice Dalveer Bhandari, passed the order while hearing a public interest litigation that sought the court’s intervention to deal with child Trafficking, which is rampant in the areas bordering Nepal and Bangladesh. The People’s Union for Civil Liberties, the petitioner, said that juvenile welfare committees...

Sugarcane growers from across the State congregated in Bangalore on Tuesday and took out a protest rally seeking a fair and remunerative price for their produce. Around 800 protesters, under the aegis of the Karnataka State Sugarcane Growers’ Association, gathered in front of R.C. College on Palace Road and shouted slogans against Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa and Minister for Agricultural Marketing and Sugar Shivaraj Thangadagi. Addressing the farmers who had come from...

Has India's poorest and most lawless state turned the corner? If you believe the government of the northern state of Bihar, the answer appears to be in the affirmative. According to it, Bihar clocked up a giddy growth rate of 11.03% in 2008-2009. This would make it India's second fastest growing state economy, just behind the industrially-developed western state of Gujarat. Not so long ago, Bihar was written off as a...

Shetty Chauhan, 60, died on the night of 12 January near a busy Traffic roundabout in central Delhi. He had been ill with a heavy cold for eight days. Sitting on rubble next to his body just hours after he died, his wife Kamla explained that he had stopped eating and drinking tea prior to his death. When an ambulance took Shetty away, he was dressed in a light sweater and...

Why is the government aggressively attacking and destroying inexpensive eco-friendly technologies and promoting pollution-friendly ones? Are we obliged to repeat all the mistakes that the West committed in its pursuit of economic growth? While it makes sense to corner First World countries into investing in eco- friendly technologies to control carbon emissions, as was attempted at Copenhagen, the stand of the Indian government that India cannot afford to enforce better...