The city has come to be known as the Detroit of India for its large concentration of automakers, but a series of labour disputes have rocked it, putting a question mark over industrial peace. Car markers such as Hyundai Motor India, German luxury car maker BMW and Ford Motor India besides Finnish handset manufacturer Nokia India have set up their plants on the city outskirts employing more than 23,000 people. As...

The Kerala Women’s Commission has proposed raising the minimum marriage age for women from 18 to 25 years to check rising divorces. Panel chairperson D. Sreedevi said in Kochi yesterday that those seeking to marry should reach a reasonable level of maturity and economic self-reliance to support a family. Otherwise, even the slightest setbacks to family life would lead to early break-ups. Last year, the women’s commission received more than 10,000 applications...

If Haryana were a country, it would be fifth on the gold medal winners’ list at Delhi 2010 — after Australia, England, Canada and India-minus-Haryana. Fifteen of India’s 38 gold at the Commonwealth Games — nearly 40 per cent of the country’s best-ever haul — have been won by athletes from Haryana. For perspective, Haryana has 2 per cent of the country’s population and occupies 1.37 per cent of its land...

The youth will not take no for an answer. Five years on, the RTI comes of age. At four feet something, Santosh’s energy belies her petite frame. The school dropout was introduced to RTI through activist Arvind Kejriwal, and now, at Parivartan’s Sundar Nagri office, she holds fort, helping others acquire everything from BPL and ration cards to school admissions through RTI. Threats and attacks by local authorities who dubbed her...

We need spectacle in the capital, not mundane things like schools and hospitals in villages In the final years of the Roman Republic, the Senate kept the masses happy by distributing cheap food and staging big spectacles known as the circus games to get votes. In his satires, the Roman poet Juvenal observed witheringly that governance had been reduced to panem et circenses (bread and circus/games). He was referring to the...