-Livemint.com Conviction rates for crimes against Dalits have declined sharply since 2011 The recent clashes between Dalits and Thakurs in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh (UP) have once again thrown the spotlight on the deep fault lines in Indian society. While violence against lower caste groups such as Dalits or scheduled castes (SCs) has a long history in the country, such crimes have been on the rise over the past few years, data...

-Livemint.com Farmers commit suicides less often than non-farmers but they are more likely to commit suicides because of economic distress compared to others With an ongoing petition in the Supreme Court on farmer suicides , and a growing clamour for farm loan waivers across several states of the country, the debate on farm suicides in India seems to be heating up once again. Several commentators and researchers have claimed for long that farmers...

-The Telegraph Guwahati: The Northeast has seen more than four-time jump in farmers' suicides from 21 in 2014 to 95 cases last year. The region also saw 105 suicides by agricultural workers last year, mostly in Assam and Tripura, revealed the report on suicides in the farming sector of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 2015. Farmers' suicides have assumed serious proportions mostly in western and southern states. This rise in suicides in the...

-Hindustan Times A potentially “politically-damaging” report on farmer suicides in Punjab will now be released only after the election results on March 11. The state government had commissioned three state universities — Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana; Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar and Punjabi University, Patiala — to study cases of farmer suicides between April 2010 and March 2013. The three had earlier examined cases from 2000 to 2010 for compensation and...

-Hindustan Times Delhi was shamed again when a four-year-old girl was raped and murdered on Thursday afternoon. But such incidents are not new in a city that is also notoriously known as the rape capital of India. Three months ago, a four-year-old girl was brutalized and murdered, allegedly by her father’s friend. The culprit was captured on CCTV camera luring the girl to a secluded place. In April last year, an eight-year-old girl...