-Hindustan Times Aligarh: “She is a very Iron lady,” says Krishna, a municipal stenographer as I wait to meet the mayor of Aligarh, the BJP’s Shakuntala Bharti on a sultry afternoon. After over an hour, clad in a bright red sari with a thick golden border, vermillion streak on forehead and sindoor all the way back in her hair, Bharti, 51, walks in with a small black pug called Blackie. Amongst the first...

-NDTV In his maiden appearance after being named Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Yogi Adityanath proclaimed that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government would maintain a laser-like focus on the twin themes of combating corruption and restoring law and order. "In the past 15 years," Adityanath noted, "UP lagged behind in the race of development as previous governments indulged in corruption, nepotism, and failed on the law order front." Indeed, one of...

Political commentaries and analyses about the recently concluded assembly elections in 5 states is not yet over. However, amidst the big debates and discussions on development and changing social dynamics, insufficient attention is being paid to the nutritional data that has been released early this year. Among the 5 states where assembly polls were conducted recently, it is the state of Uttar Pradesh that has the highest proportion of adult...

-The Hindu Among SAARC nations, it’s third behind Sri Lanka, Maldives India slipped down one place from 130 to 131 among the 188 countries ranked in terms of human development, says the 2016 Human Development Report (HDR) released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Tuesday. India’s human development index (HDI) value of 0.624 puts it in the “medium human development” category, alongside countries such as Congo, Namibia and Pakistan. It is...

-Livemint.com The International Water Day serves as an annual reminder of the mess in management of water resources In an intriguing order on 20 March, the Uttarakhand High Court has recognized the rivers Ganges and Yamuna as a living entity, which means that anybody found polluting the river would be seen as harming a human being. It remains to be seen what impact the order has but the order does reflect a...