Before the break of dawn, they began to queue up. By the time the two polling booths, adjoining each other, opened, more than half of Netai had assembled to cast, perhaps, the vote of their lifetime. The young and the old, the landed and the landless, the men and women; they were all there to avenge the killing of nine unarmed villagers five months ago by the Harmads - an...
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Super-sensitive, not to bitter root by Biswanath Roy and Sujan Dutta
Gethi is such an inedible beetroot for most of us that it must be boiled overnight and dried thrice before the bitterness can be cut. Even after that, the faces of children pucker as soon as they put it in the mouth. A gethi looks like a misshapen potato with dark brown hairy strands that must be plucked clean. The Pahariyas of Borogora village in the lap of the Bagmundi jungles...
More »Male preserve by TK Rajalakshmi
Haryana records the lowest adult sex ratio in the country, and its Jhajjar district has the worst adult and child sex ratios. THE results of the provisional Census revealed that Haryana as a whole registered the lowest adult sex ratio in the country and also had the lowest child sex ratio (CSR). Among the State's districts, Jhajjar recorded the lowest adult as well as child sex ratio, and within the district,...
More »Girls interrupted by Ruhi Kandhari
It was quite a role reversal. Moments after my photojournalist colleague Sayantoni and I introduced ourselves to the chief medical officer of Jhajjar district in Haryana, he did what we as journalists normally do. Reel off a barrage of questions. The first question was new (not what one generally faces while covering renewable energy policy in Delhi), “Bhai-behen kitne hain? (How many sisters/brothers you have?)” and my quick answer was “koi...
More »About to marry? Run an RTI check first by Tapas Chakraborty
When her parents found a groom for her last August, young BPO executive Pratiksha Sharma was reconciled to the idea of arranged marriage but not to any possible dark sides in her would-be husband’s past. So the 25-year-old BBA graduate secretly got in touch with Manish Kumar, her family lawyer in hometown Meerut, who tossed the idea of checking her future life partner’s background using the Right to Information Act...
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