The National Federation of Indian Women has expressed its concern over the verdict of Delhi High Court upholding the marriage of a 15-year-old Muslim girl quoting Mohammedan Law on marriage. “Disturbing” “This is very disturbing because one of the reasons for India's high maternal mortality is early marriage. This will also prevent girls from enjoying their Constitutional rights like Right to Education, etc. At a time when anti-Constitutional bodies, including Khap Panchayats,...

Araria, Bihar: Exactly a year ago, just before the rains, Kumiya Devi got her three-decimal (1,306.8-square foot) plot at Kajra in Araria district under the Mahadalit Vikas Yojana, the Nitish Kumar government’s showpiece scheme to distribute land to landless Dalits.   Before she could build her home, a seasonal stream flooded the plot and her 10-year-old son Aklu drowned in it while going to school. Reason: there was no approach road to...

While the government wants India to tighten its belt, the Planning Commission can afford to, well, flush with cash.  On Wednesday, Commission chief Montek Singh Ahluwalia said that Rs 35 lakh spent on two toilets in his office was not public money down the drain.  Ahluwalia explained that these were not toilets, but "toilet complexes."  Each of these complexes can accommodate 10 people at a time. He did not specify whether taxpayers would...

-The Hindu The killing of the Ranvir Sena chief and the violence it triggered expose the fragile foundations of Nitish Kumar's ‘new Bihar'   The assassination of Brahmeshwar Singh alias Mukhiya, founder of Ranvir Sena, the dreaded private army of upper caste Bhumihars, raises fears of the revival of “Barbaric Bihar”. From the first major massacre of Dalits in Belchi in 1977 to the killings in Mianpur in 2000 by socially dominant castes...

I read Aman Sethi's piece on the Saranda Development Plan (“Nine months on, police camps sole development in Saranda plan”, June 4) with great interest but with greater anguish. Before I deal with his main charge — that private mining interests are behind the SDP — I want to lay out what the SDP is all about. It is the first systematic experiment in combining a security-oriented and development-focussed approach...