VISHAL, the son of a farm labourer in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, is almost four. He should weigh around 16kg (35lb). But scooping him up from the floor costs his nursery teacher, a frail woman in a faded sari, little effort. She slips Vishal’s scrawny legs through two holes cut in the corners of a cloth sack, which she hooks to a weighing scale. The needle stops at...

A hillock is strewn with empty bottles of whisky and sticks — remnants of what tribals allege was a 48-hour torture session by drunk BSF men. The enraged people of Panchangi village have accused the paramilitary force, along with Chhattisgarh police, of brutally beating nearly 40 men. Two teenage girls have also alleged that they were sexually molested. One of them says she was stripped, while another provided a detailed...

Sujatha Sundaran, 25, sits on a rickety bench and points to a rubber nursery that was a helipad about a decade ago in Mundakkai colony in the heart of Kerala’s northern district of Kasargod. Local children used to watch with awe as the choppers flew overhead and sprayed the insecticide endosulfan on the cashew groves of the Plantation Corp. of Kerala Ltd, a state government undertaking. She was eight when she...

The Prevention of Torture Bill fails to meet the minimum standards laid down in international law and betrays a contemptuous attitude towards Indian citizens.  Unless torture is inflicted for the purpose of extracting some information, the proposed law will refuse to take notice A court can entertain a complaint under the proposed law only if it is made within six months of the date of the offence The right against torture, quite...

With often preventable, non-communicable diseases such as heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, cancer and chronic respiratory illness accounting for 60 per cent of all global deaths, experts from around the world gathered at a United Nations forum today to draw up plans to reverse the trend. Solutions exist to prevent premature deaths from such diseases by cutting tobacco use, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity and the harmful use of alcohol, yet the...