Why were two tribals and the Essar group framed by the Chhattisgarh police? Why are Soni Sori and Linga Kodopi being systematically silenced? This chilling story of one family reveals more about India's Naxal crisis than any official document can. AS I sit to write this, at 12.20 pm on 4 October 2011, an SMS pops up on my phone: “Soni Sori has been arrested by the Delhi Crime Branch.” The...

-Live Mint   As United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi prepares to intervene next week in the great national debate about who is poor, she might want to visit north-eastern Mumbai to see how the poorest are not even classified as such and how a giant government scheme to save their children from malnutrition is failing. The nauseating stench from a mountain of garbage greets a visitor to Rafi Nagar at the base...

As a national debate rages over the Indian poverty line, in the heart of Bandra, one of Mumbai’s richest suburbs, in a shanty with barely enough standing space for two adults, three-year-old Priya Doiphode, clad in a red tee shirt, lies listless on a string bed. Priya is one of the 83,243 children in Mumbai who are malnourished, according to government data, a statistic that makes Mumbai the most malnourished...

PALNAR/SAMELI (DANTEWADA): They sat watching cartoons on TV a day after their mother was arrested in faraway Delhi on charges of acting as a conduit/courier for Maoists.  While adivasi school teacher Soni Sori faces police interrogation in Chhattisgarh for her role in an alleged pay off by Essar group to Maoists, her children, Muskaan (12), Deependera (10) and Amrita (6) are at their uncle Ramdev's house in Palnar village for a...

Shri Ram Sena activist held for brutal assault Senior lawyer and Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan was violently attacked by activists of the Shri Ram Sena and a previously unknown outfit, Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena, in his chamber located opposite the heavily guarded Supreme Court premises on Bhagwan Dass Road here on Wednesday. The organisations claimed that the assault was in retaliation for his recent statement on Jammu and Kashmir, purportedly...