Delhi is an anxious city this monsoon season, struggling to meet an onerous deadline. Preparations continue at a feverish pace for the 19th Commonwealth Games (CWG), which will bear down on the Indian metropolis October 3-14, along with some 8,500 athletes from the 71 states and territories that were once part of the British Empire. Around-the-clock construction and spells of heavy monsoon rain have turned Delhi into a swirl of mud...

Poverty and exploitation forced some tribal women in eastern Uttar Pradesh to turn to Naxals, who proved to be no different. Leading a pathetic life after being sexually exploited and abandoned by the extremists, eight tribal women have now sought CM Mayawati's intervention to help in their rehabilitation. Hailing from the Naxal-affected Kaimur range, which includes Robertsganj, Mirzapur, Sonebhadra and Chandauli, these women had joined the banned outfits between 2000-2005. Most...

The amount of rural reportage in the Indian media remains far too low, with even important stories such as those on farmer suicides tending to be ignored. One of the outspoken critics of this trend has been P Sainath, rural-affairs editor of The Hindu  and 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts. He was also the journalist who originally broke the story on...

Despite recording robust economic growth over the last couple of decades and spending thousands of crores of rupees on subsidising foodgrain and other programmes aimed at improving the nation’s social indicators, India ranks a low 67 among 84 countries on the Global Hunger Index, 2010. The country has actually dropped two levels since last year on the index published jointly by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Welthungerhilfe and Concern...

INDIA has dropped two places to rank 67th amongst 84 developing nations in the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2010, with alarmingly high levels of hunger, undernourished and stunted children and poorly fed women. It is home to 42 per cent of the world’s underweight children under the age of five, based on data from 2003-2008 in the report released by the Food Policy Institute in Washington...