If the Northeast has occupied the farthest nook of mainland India’s consciousness, the state of Manipur has been given the tiniest toehold on that nook. That is why the rest of the nation, as a rule, doesn’t think of the eight states (including Sikkim) beyond the chicken’s neck, except for news of death and gore. But gory news is largely and thankfully past, and tales from the Northeast, except about...

Both sides will have to rise above politics and focus on the water crisis, which requires difficult and bitter solutions.  As the long hot summer sizzles, one's thoughts in Lahore and Amritsar turn to water. It is scarce on both sides of the border. When the British finally and fully took over the Punjab in 1849, their thoughts turned to the possibility of engineering for agriculture. In the 1860s, they...

While you were glued to your flat screen, with your eyeballs popping out every time the ball was hit for a six, in a dark corner of India - in a Haryana village very close to the national capital - a dog was barking. Since it was a Dalit dog (in India, even dogs have caste), the upper caste Jaats were getting all riled up. So they decided to teach...

If recent indicators are anything to go by – the failure to keep food prices down, the proposed national food security Act, the failure to ensure even minimum wages to construction workers at projects for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, to recount a few – it seems the country has given up even the pretence of caring about its children or their crippling, unbudging state of malnutrition. Leaders,...

People in the southern state of Kerala are the heaviest drinkers in India, and sales of alcohol are rising fast. The BBC's Soutik Biswas examines why. Jacob Varghese says he began drinking when he was nine years old, sipping on his father's unfinished whisky and brandy in glass tumblers. It's a terrifying story of a descent into alcoholism for this 40-year-old health inspector. At school, he consumed cheap local liquor. He...