In an upstairs classroom at a residential school in Mal, near Lucknow, the girls are revising for their exams. As the light starts to fade at the glassless windows, each girl takes a brightly coloured plastic lamp and carries it to her space on the floor. There is no electricity, but the lamps are solar powered. They have been donated jointly by Swedish company Ikea and the United Nations Children’s...

Activist Gopal Krishna makes a case that the Unique Identification Number project is a gross violation of fundamental human rights and points out that a similar project/law in Britain is going to be repealed. This is with reference to a privacy invasion project which is relevant to India and all the democratic countries of the world. The very first bill that is to be presented by the UK's new coalition...

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE Act) will be notified on April 1. The Act attempts to address the historical problem of continuing illiteracy as well as the lack of educational opportunities that persist for sections of our population even sixty years after adoption of the Indian constitution. The socio-political, legal and financial aspects of the Act have been much debated and its final form...

Homeless people in Delhi will not have to go hungry anymore. Now, under the Antyodya Anna Yojana (AAY), a homeless household in the Capital will be supplied with 25 kg of wheat, 10 kg of rice, 6 kg of sugar and 22 litres of kerosene oil once it gets an AAY card. The AAY scheme, launched in 2000, intends to provide special food-based assistance to destitute households that are given...

CITIES MAKE one simple promise to newcomers: Sacrifice yourself to me and your children shall prosper. This promise drew Ahmed Raza, a small-time wrestler from an Uttar Pradesh village and millions like him to the capital of newly-independent India. Raza kept his part of the bargain, yet half a century later, his daughter was pushed out of the city her father helped build, the only home she has known. “I...