The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) to come up with a detailed plan of action regarding the development of education system and implementation of Right to Education in the north-eastern states of the country. A bench of Justice Altamas Kabir, Justice Cyriac Joseph, and Justice Surinder Singh Nijjar gave the direction after the court in 2007 took suo motu cognisance of a...

Why we are doing this story     * Tribal lands are under pressure across India. In Orissa, they have been holding out against big corporates like Vedanta and Posco. *** From afar, the fumes rising from factory chimneys in Gujarat’s industrial belt make them seem like skyscrapers on fire. It’s a grey rust-and-chemicals stretch that they call, without irony, the Golden Corridor. It extends all the way from the north of Ahmedabad, through...

By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: "Think about the future," or "Aren't we also members...

-The Telegraph   The government today issued a flood alert for 10 districts with the warning that the situation may deteriorate if the rain continues. “The situation is being monitored round the clock,” said irrigation minister Manas Bhuniya. He said the water levels of some rivers had risen following continuous rainfall over the past two days in their catchment areas. “The districts for which a flood alert has been issued are Malda, Murshidabad, North...

After the brutal murder of Azad, is there any hope for well-meaning routine calls for “dialogue” and “peace talks”? What can the "civil society" do as a serious, real intervention? It is reported that the decades-old talks with Naga insurgent groups has made some progress recently (See “Differences ‘narrowed’,” Times of India, July 19, 2011). One reason why talks have a chance in these cases is that separatism comes in...