Women from minority communities have outnumbered men by a long way — 417 to 338 — in winning the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad national fellowships for research, prompting the government to drop plans for reservation. Launched this year to help minority community students in higher education, this scheme offers integrated five-year fellowships in the form of financial assistance to pursue degrees such as MPhil and PhD. Girls from all communities except Buddhists...

RAJINDER SACHAR is one of India’s renowned civil rights activists. A former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Sachar has done pioneering work in enabling a legal framework to assist hundreds who stand accused by the police across India for waging war against the State, many of them with little or dubious evidence. Though 87 years old, Sachar continues to work tirelessly with one of India’s key rights groups,...

A number of eminent persons and well-known activists have rallied to the support of writer Arundhati Roy, whose article on Operation Green Hunt has come under the scanner of the Chhattisgarh police. They have issued a public statement condemning the threatened action by the State's Director-General of Police, who “is reported to be seriously examining whether Ms. Roy should be prosecuted under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA)/Unlawful Activities Prevention...

Caste is feudal, the market free and equal. Correct? Ask Ratan Lal Sirswal or Deepak Jatav. Sirswal, 75, had started off as a sweeper but is now one of the oldest businessmen in Panipat, Haryana. He quit his sweeper’s job once his handloom unit was on its feet. His success, he says, came largely because he hid the fact that he was born a Valmiki Dalit. Customers who discovered his caste origins...

Diehard devotees may not believe this. But it's true that the water of the holiest among holy rivers -- the Ganga -- fails to meet the drinking and bathing standards after it leaves Garhmukteshwar and is most polluted in Kanpur. The national river meets all three standard parameters -- Bio-Oxygen Demand (BOD), Dissolved Oxygen and total coliform -- only at Rishikesh. For a river water to be fit for bathing...