-The Hindu Magsaysay award winner and the chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), Dr. Shantha Sinha, on Saturday called for conducting more studies and research towards evolving strong policies to protect the rights of children between 14 and 18 years old. Dr. Sinha said that children in that age group are very vulnerable, with many of them getting married and having at least two to three...

-The Telegraph A US government report has painted a gloomy picture of human trafficking in the Northeast. The US state department’s 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report, released by secretary of state Hillary Clinton yesterday, said there had been a rise in women from the region being subjected to “servile marriages” in states with low female-to-male child sex ratios such as Haryana and Punjab. According to the report, girls from the Northeast are also...

By stopping social security pensions, the Karnataka government has put the lives of over 10 lakh poor in peril. Naveen Basavaraj Kuntoji is nine years old and suffers from cerebral palsy. His movements are greatly restricted, and it looks like he is in great pain every time he valiantly wills his body to do something. When he is hungry, he slowly lifts his hand and points to his mouth. When this...

A narrow education is making engineers oblivious to the importance of human interaction and raising the cost of even simple tasks My time in South Asia has rewarded me with an enigma: why is engineering so expensive here? Why is it often many times more expensive than in Australia, my home? My search for answers led me to shanty towns on the fringes of mega-cities. We compared an award winning Indian factory...

-The Indian Express Only the names of the patients have changed. Acute encephalitis syndrome is back in Bihar, hitting the same districts as every year, its victims once again mostly children of Mahadalit communities living in various degrees of poverty, their resistance levels lowered by malnutrition and exposure to heat. And the government response has been repetitive to the point of being ritualistic. It has asked for Central assistance and set up...