Much of the daylight robbery in the name of Commonwealth Games has been justified in the name of "National Prestige" and "World class aspirations. Whether all these surreptitious measures will eventually deliver the games is an open question? The Commonwealth is a 'friendly' association of those 72 colonies which were once part of the British Empire and rose to free nationhood - some through protracted struggle and others through negotiation. In...

Ten journalists have been selected to spend time with rural communities, understand their anxieties and specialise in covering the country’s rural crises, through an initiative of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. The recipients of the Inclusive Media Fellowship are: Mahim Pratap Singh of The Hindu (to work on the impact of distress migration on nutrition security and livelihoods in five districts of Orissa), Joaquim Fernandes of The...

One nabbed at traffic junction, the other at the bus-stand on her way home Even as it has launched a campaign to eradicate beggary in the State, the State Social Welfare Department has kept in wrongful custody at least two persons who are not beggars — a seven-year-old child and a flood victim from Kurdi village in Raichur district — at the Beggars’ Rehabilitation Centre at Sumanahalli on Magadi Road. This...

Commission pulls up Puri district Collector  The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has directed the Orissa government to register an FIR and act against persons, who illegally confined 17 persons in Puri district and extracted menial works from them under the pernicious custom of ‘bartan’, a manifestation of the bonded labour system. The Commission, which pulled up the district Collector, told the government to take action against the officials who failed...

Upholding the right to shelter as a fundamental right for all residents of the Capital, including those living in slums, the Delhi High Court on Thursday restrained the state government from forcibly razing any hutment — unless it was an encroachment on an existing road — without guaranteeing alternative accommodation. The government was also told to formulate a concrete relocation policy in cases where slums needed to be razed. Delivering...