A couple from an Andaman tribe with just 100 members left have had a baby, sending their island hamlet into raptures and delighting anthropologists worried about the group’s extinction. The Onge baby boy born earlier this week to Shri Santosh, 28, and Reetai, 26, is doing fine, officials in the Andamans’ welfare department said today. “Both the mother and child are in good health. With the birth, the Onge population is now...

-Live Mint   As United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi prepares to intervene next week in the great national debate about who is poor, she might want to visit north-eastern Mumbai to see how the poorest are not even classified as such and how a giant government scheme to save their children from malnutrition is failing. The nauseating stench from a mountain of garbage greets a visitor to Rafi Nagar at the base...

Why were two tribals and the Essar group framed by the Chhattisgarh police? Why are Soni Sori and Linga Kodopi being systematically silenced? This chilling story of one family reveals more about India's Naxal crisis than any official document can. AS I sit to write this, at 12.20 pm on 4 October 2011, an SMS pops up on my phone: “Soni Sori has been arrested by the Delhi Crime Branch.” The...

As a national debate rages over the Indian poverty line, in the heart of Bandra, one of Mumbai’s richest suburbs, in a shanty with barely enough standing space for two adults, three-year-old Priya Doiphode, clad in a red tee shirt, lies listless on a string bed. Priya is one of the 83,243 children in Mumbai who are malnourished, according to government data, a statistic that makes Mumbai the most malnourished...

Amounts to violation of right to life, survival and development' Taking suo motu cognizance of a large number of children dying due to Japanese Encephalitis in Uttar Pradesh, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has asked the State Government to submit an action taken report on these deaths within 15 days. The Commission has cited a news report wherein it has been mentioned that “the deadly encephalitis, a water...