Last week, the Supreme Court granted bail to Binayak Sen, the doctor and civil rights activist who had been sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Raipur on the charge of sedition. Sen was charged with being a Naxalite sympathizer, and of acting as a courier for the Communist Party of India (Maoist). The verdict of the lower court had been widely condemned. The proceedings were farcical; with no...

Kolkata Consulate: His candidacy 'could offer a possible out from the Hasina-Zia zero-sum game' Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize winner known in particular for his microfinance initiatives in Bangladesh, appeared to have been aware of the risks and consequences of a move he made to enter the country's politics. He told Henry Jardine, the U.S. Consul General in Kolkata, that he was aware of the “potentially bruising response” it would...

The first results of Census 2011 put India's population at 1,210 million, indicating a demographic transition. CENSUS 2011 is the 15th one undertaken in India since 1872 and the seventh after the country attained Independence. While there have been stray historical references to population counts of one kind or another in earlier periods over much smaller territories within the territory that constitutes present-day India, the consensus view is that the...

A new data analysed by the Planning Commission says that around 382 million Indians were below poverty line in 2009-10, a decline of 27 million since 2004-05.   The decline of over five percentage points (from 37.2% to 32%) in as many years was much less than the target of annual reduction of 2% in poverty in the 11th plan. What the UPA government can showcase is the highest poverty reduction...

Do we, the Indian middle class, see the corruption within us? I was too busy being corrupt to join Anna Hazare’s camp last week. For four days, I heard nothing but stories of our Tahrir Square-like revolution against the corrupt unfurling right under our noses in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. But it was school admission time and I had some serious palm-greasing, document-fudging, string-pulling, weight-throwing and tout-chasing to do. I had...