Supreme Court appointed commissioners have asked Jharkhand government to set up an enquiry commission to probe reports of hunger deaths in the state that has all along refuted such occurences. As many as 26 malnutrition deaths were reported from the state in 2008 and 2009. But the state government maintained the reasons behind the deaths weren’t related to hunger. Now, the office of the Commissioners of the Supreme Court (Right to Food),...

Last summer, about 150 families of Kachan village in Jharkhand’s Palamu district decided to pool funds to repair their only community tube well. A drought, the worst in many years, had dried up two ponds; there were no wells around; and the tube well had been dysfunctional for a year. It took a lot of hardship and one whole month for them to put together what the mechanic had asked...

Over three lakh cases are pending in the Bombay High Court, according to an information revealed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The details, dated till December 31, 2009 were given after local social worker Omprakash Sharma sought information in this regard. According to the RTI reply statement, there were as many as 3,38,183 cases were pending in the Bombay High Court and the sanctioned number judges in the...

The draft food security legislation readied for cabinet’s approval is much narrower in scope than what was initially envisaged and, hence, stops short of assuring an entitlement as had been previously pledged. The final draft Bill which has been approved by the empowered group of ministers (eGoM) and reviewed by Mint restricts coverage only to poor citizens, confines it to the supply of 25kg of wheat and rice, does not lock...

A handful of Jarawa tribesmen recently broke into a house in the village of Mathura in the Andaman islands. They left after taking away rice, sugar and coconut. The first people to successfully migrate out of Africa, the Jarawas came to the Andaman islands 60,000 years ago, scientists believe. Essentially hunter-gatherers, the tribespeople have traditionally survived on the raw meat of wild boar. But in the 1970s, a road (the...