It was a night out under the stars. These were not city slickers but a group of villagers from Salona. On the way down from Chikhaldhara hill station in Amravati district, the darkness of the cold night is lit by small fires. Groups of people huddle around the flickering flames. Their children lie swaddled in thin bedclothes which cannot keep the chill away. Shivlal Belsare and his wife are finishing off...

Imagine that the climate summit conference in Copenhagen this weekend was not a gathering of nations. Imagine a gathering of delegates from the many ages of a single nation. The fault lines would not be India and China versus the global rich, but rather China 1800 versus China 1978 versus China 2100. It would be a negotiation not between different lands but between different historical facts, different levels of survivalism....

Nineteen years after he allegedly molested a 14-year-old tennis player who later committed suicide, former Haryana police chief S.P.S. Rathore was today sentenced to six months in jail, a punishment the victim’s friends considered too light. Rathore, who retired in 2002, has been granted bail till a higher court decides on the appeal he said he would file. Ruchika Girhotra had accused the officer of molesting her on August 12, 1990, when...

PRIMARY SCHOOLING: I Pratichi Trust (India) was established a decade ago, along with its sister across the border, Pratichi Trust (Bangladesh) [1]. The Bangladesh centre has been concentrating on the social progress of girls and young women there (it has worked particularly on supporting and training young women journalists reporting from rural Bangladesh), whereas here in India, the work of the Trust has been mainly focused on advancing primary education...

A report card from Pratichi Trust on the primary schooling scene in West Bengal Pratichi Trust (India) was established a decade ago, along with Pratichi Trust (Bangladesh). The latter has been concentrating on the social progress of girls and young women: it has worked particularly on supporting and training young women journalists reporting from rural Bangladesh. In India, the work has mainly focussed on advancing primary education and elementary health care,...