Census 2011 data bring into the open Maharashtra’s terrible record in sex-selective abortions. In early June, Vijaymala Patekar, a mother of four girls, haemorrhaged to death at a hospital in Parli, Beed district, Maharashtra. She was reportedly in her second trimester of pregnancy. Her family had allegedly forced her to abort the foetus when they learnt it was a girl child. Sudam Munde, the doctor who performed the procedure, fled Parli but...

-The Hindustan Times Condemning the attack on RTI activist Akhil Gogoi, the National Campaign for Peoples Right to Information (NCPRI) on Monday asked the Assam government to immediately disclose the Central government’s report on tackling floods in the state. Gagoi, who is also general secretary of the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), was assaulted while he was surveying the flood situation in Punni village, Dharmapur area of Assam and is currently in...

Model community forestry initiatives in Orissa are defying Forest Department efforts to control and exploit the region’s forests. ‘Heaven is a forest of miles and miles of Mohua trees / And hell is a forest of miles and miles of Mohua trees with a forest guard in it!’ Thus goes a song of the Muria Adivasis in the forests of Bastar in central India. Encapsulated in this simple expression, however, is...

-The Hindu Chief Educational Officer takes note of The Hindu report and articles by expert The Government Girls’ Higher Secondary School at Melur near here, which had initially denied admission to two 17-year-old married girls in class XI, has finally agreed to admit them. “Yes, they will be admitted,” said Headmistress V.P. Nirmala. Her decision came following the intervention of Chief Educational Officer (CEO) S. Nagaraja Murugan, who took note of the news...

-The Telegraph Union home minister P. Chidambaram today expressed concern over Bengal’s “culture of violence” and advised “the so-called educated classes” to stop living in a “fool’s paradise”. The first part of the remarks by Chidambaram, who was speaking to industrialists on the need for Democratic forms of dissent, was hotly contested by the Mamata Banerjee government that is already suspicious of the UPA because of the Left’s support to the central...