-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Eight-year-old Pihu Tiwari runs a marathon every morning with nearly 12 kilos loaded on her back. At least that’s what her walk from the school gate to her second-floor classroom feels like. She doesn’t just get tired but often pants her way up the staircase. “She is thin and weighs 29kg. And every day, she has to carry a bag to school which is almost half her weight. My...

-The Indian Express The gangrape may have brought the tribal councils of this West Bengal district to notoriety, but it wasn't the first sexual abuse on their orders. What is more at play here though is growing outside interference in a region considered a vote bank, writes Madhuparna Das. On January 29 evening, 900 people of a village in Birbhum district's Labhpur block gathered near the hut of their headman. The hut,...

-Down to Earth If any other cause was responsible for so many deaths and injuries as we see on our roads it would have been a state of emergency Sunita Narain-our colleague and friend-was seriously injured in an accident while cycling yesterday. A car hit her and fled. This cruel act of crime and heartlessness could have shattered our faith in humanity had it not been for the kind act of the...

-Outlook The faecal matter hits the rotary blades, politically-but we're still staring at a sanitation disaster "Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate mostly besides the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover." -V.S. Naipaul An Area of Darkness, 1964 Not...

-The Indian Express Rajasthan/ Delhi: Three states where the UPA govt has rolled out direct cash transfers go to polls later this year. On the ground, the scheme has not quite turned out the game-changer the government reckoned it would. A frail Gori Sahaab, 90, instructs his son to pour mustard oil into a tiny diya in his one-room house. He once used a kerosene lamp but has stopped buying that fuel....