Boommi Gowda used to fear the night. Her vision fogged by glaucoma, she could not see by just the dim glow of a kerosene lamp, so she avoided going outside where king cobras slithered freely and tigers carried off neighborhood dogs. But things have changed at Gowda's home in the remote southern village of Nada. A solar-powered lamp pours white light across the front of the mud-walled hut she shares with...

Former Union home secretary G.K. Pillai’s statement that Akhil Gogoi is not a Maoist and that his arrest was an overreaction may have come as a huge relief to the RTI activist but it has also reflected a disconnect between Delhi and Dispur. An official source here told The Telegraph today that the disconnect has come out in the open over the observations being made by both the governments over the...

People who play doctor or heed quackery are biting off more than they can chew Whenever a patient with bleeding in the stomach or a child whose fever has not subsided in a week is admitted into Sasaram-based physician B.B. Singh’s clinic, he immediately knows that it’s a case of self-medication. “At least 40-50 per cent of my patients have either had sleeping pills, or antibiotics, or painkillers without a...

-The Times of India   After years of debate, foreign direct investment in retail may soon be a reality with a panel of secretaries expected to approve the framework for allowing global retail chains to set up shop in India later this month. Government sources said the proposal has gained momentum, with both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee backing it, and chances are that the Cabinet could clear...

It is a question that journalists in India are often asked without affection. “Don’t you have anything good to say?” A positive story, a happy story? The rebuke, when it is an e-mail or an online comment in response to an unflattering article about India, is sometimes accompanied by abuses or a general description of the journalist’s mother. And it is particularly passionate when it comes from the expatriate Indian whose...