Between democracy and darkness stands the judiciary. It stands heads and shoulders above the judicial systems in Asia. But it is in rapid decline. Ahead is pitch darkness Colin Gonsalves Delhi In the 61st year of the republic, surely, India has transited into Kalyug. Surveys of the Union of India as well as expert reports published by the Arjun Sengupta committee and the NC Saxena Committee appointed by the Central government...

The poverty line that the Tendulkar Committee proposes depends on reduced calorie consumption, and fails to provide for reasonable household expenditures on schooling and health.  For some years, the Government of India has been under pressure to change the norms for calculating the official poverty line. Current norms have resulted in gross and manifest underestimation of the numbers of the poor, and, consequently, in the exclusion of hundreds of millions...

Bihar has been in the news recently for recording an average growth rate of 11.3 per cent for the period between 2004 and 2009. Much has been written about the quality of governance and the improved state of roads. This is indeed commendable, and no mean achievement, for a State that had virtually become a “development outcast”. I was pleasantly surprised to note on a recent trip to Bihar the...

While a country like China devised practical ways to deliver healthcare to rural populations by deploying its band of ‘barefoot doctors’ from the 1960s in a transitional phase, and then went on to expand full-fledged medical education facilities that enabled national coverage to a great degree, chronic shortages of doctors in rural India six decades after Independence remain a worry. The allopathic doctor-patient ratio is a dismal 1:1,722. Nevertheless, the...

It is equally practised among Dalits, says survey carried out in 1,589 villages  98 forms of untouchability practised by caste Hindus and 99 forms by Dalits Inter-caste marriage strictly prohibited by Dalits in 99.1 % villages Despite tall talk of progress and development, the practice of untouchability is still prevalent in rural areas of Gujarat. This was found in a survey by the Navsarjan Trust and the Robert F. Kennedy Centre for...