How the global garment industry is using regressive customs in Tamil Nadu, enabling it to exploit young women workers… Behind the smiling exterior of a fast-growing economy lie the tears and tragedies of women like these workers. Girls. Dowry. The two go together. No matter what you do to separate them, they somehow get conjoined, like twins that have remained connected in one body. We are told this is one of the...

-Outlook   Eight police personnel were held hostage by a group of villagers opposing the Rs 52,000 crore Posco steel plant for nearly five hours today before being set free in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district. Seven policemen and the driver of police jeep which entered Patana village in Dhinkia panchayat were stopped by villagers, mostly women and were held captive, Additional Superintendent of Police Shantanu Das told reporters. The policemen and the driver were...

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has proposed that landowners should be paid six times the registered sale deed value as compensation and a solatium in case of compulsory acquisition by the state. The council sat through the day today firming up recommendations for the land acquisition bill the Centre plans to introduce in the next session of Parliament. Sonia was present for nearly six hours. It also proposed that compensation should...

Compared to many parts of the world, access to the Internet content has been relatively free in India. Unlike people in countries like China, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, etc, Indians do not face any government-controlled restrictions on accessing sites dealing with politics, religion or even mature content. But that might all change. In April 2011, the Indian government's Department of Information Technology issued new regulations, Information Technology Rules, 2011, under which any content deemed...

In Greater Noida, farmers resist fiercely attempts to take over their land for the Yamuna expressway and a hi-tech city. IT is a tale of two worlds, one in the present and the other in the future; one living and breathing and toiling away in parts of the National Capital Region and the other beautifully blueprinted and waiting to be willed into reality by the government and its elites in...