A body, with AK-47 and hearing aid beside, found in West Bengal Communist Party of India (Maoist) Polit Bureau member Koteshwara Rao alias Kishenji, who has been spearheading Maoist operations in West Bengal's Jangalmahal region, is suspected to have been killed in an encounter in the Burisole Forest area in Paschim Medinipur district on Thursday. “A body was found with an AK-47 and a hearing aid beside. We suspect that the AK-47...

-Globe and Mail Sister Valsa John wanted to go home. Living in self-imposed exile hundreds of kilometres away, she pined for the hut in an aboriginal village where she had built a life. She talked about the people she loved there, and the quiet of the nights. Then she added, in a voice both wistful and matter-of-fact: “If I go home, most probably they will kill me.” They did kill her. In...

We have five million children in the labour market, say official figures. Their actual numbers may be four times as many. As a nation, we have failed each one of them…   Millions of our children still labour today, in factories, farms, kilns, mines, homes and city waste dumps, when they should be in school or in a playground. We profoundly fail these children, collectively depriving them of education, play, rest, healthy...

An unprecedented economic growth during the last decade has also seen increasing malnutrition, hunger and starvation amongst certain sections of society. India ranks 66 in the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) World Hunger Index of 88 countries (Inter-national Food Policy Research Institute). More than 200 million people in this country are denied the right to food. One-third of all underweight children (57 million) in the world due to lack of...

The climate change negotiations are deadlocked because of a basic difference of approach. Developing countries are calling for enhanced implementation of existing agreements, while developed countries are insisting on a new agreement that would shift a large share of their obligations to the shoulders of developing countries, particularly the ‘newly emerging economies’ like India and China. The European Union is calling for negotiations on a new agreement to replace the...