CHHATTISGARH, India, 6 May 2011 – When Pausha Madharia, 16, speaks, she gives voice to the hopes, dreams and fears of every child in the Indian State of Chhattisgarh. Standing before the State Assembly recently, she shared her concerns about child labour, discrimination faced by young girls and the troubles that some students encounter when they’re simply trying to attend school. Pausha told legislators that drunken men sprawled on the road...

The Tatas pulled out of Singur; the Salims of Indonesia out of Nandigram. What is still ticking is the Jindals’ Rs-35,000-crore, 10-million-tonne steel plant at Salboni. It has the potential to churn out the first industrial success story for whoever captures power in West Bengal after May 13. Along with the steel plant, a 1,000-MW power project to is coming up. At one point, Salboni had appeared to have the makings of...

Tihar jail today has the largest collection of charged or convicted top officials, a powerful ex-minister, sundry politicians and officials. Maharashtra had a teflon-coated chief minister who was ‘sacked’ to a cabinet post in Delhi after being long untouched by many scandals. Another just exited. A former Jharkhand chief minister is in jail on charges of looting his state treasury and accumulating funds abroad. The powerful founder of the Nationalist...

India plans to increase its allocation for health to 2%-3% of its GDP over the next five years. Public spending on health was 0·94% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2004–05, which was among the lowest in the world. Private expenditure on health in India is about 78% as compared to 14% in the Maldives, Bhutan (29%), Sri Lanka (53%), Thailand (31%) and China (61%). Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on...

The arrest of Suresh Kalmadi on 25 April marked yet another scene in the prolonged drama surrounding the Commonwealth Games held in Delhi in October 2010. Yet the general media focus on Kalmadi may have served to distract attention from the many other acts of omission and commission that mark the sordid history of that extravagantly planned and deeply flawed public show. In these other actions, there are stories of funds...