Malnutrition, illness and abject poverty have taken a severe toll on children in Mumbai's Rafiq Nagar slum. Situated in a vast dumping ground, swarming with flies, and packed with garbage heaps at every step, the destitute colony has seen a series of child deaths since April this year, even as authorities scramble to ascertain their causes.Seven-month old Asif Sheikh from Rafiq nagar slum died on Tuesday. His death comes less...

Hollywood filmmaker James Cameron was all ears when Anand Kumar, who founded Bihar's Super 30 free coaching centre for students, narrated the real life stories of hope that his institute has generated year after year. "Cameron told me it was amazing to listen to my real life stories of hope. He was so impressed that he hinted at using such stories with people across the world," Kumar, who shared the...

Over the past two decades, Maharashtra’s leaders and caretakers have carefully steered it from being India’s most progressive and forward-looking state to lying on the verge of becoming one of India’s most backward.This is no mean achievement. Mumbai, as is well known, contributes close to 40% of the nation’s direct taxes. In 2003-2004, Maharashtra’s net state domestic product was second only to Haryana’s and the gross domestic product was 13%...

Tom Sawyer, the mischievous young protagonist of Mark Twain's 19th century classic, is an unlikely hero for a social activist from rural West Bengal. But Shabnam Ramaswamy, a feisty 55-year-old from Murshidabad, likens herself to Tom Sawyer in more ways than one.  Like Sawyer, who, when given the onerous task of painting a wall, convinced his friends of the importance of his job and had them queuing up to help him,...

Appreciating the country's commitment towards universalising health coverage for the people, health economist Robert Yates has said the country needs to increase its public spending on health either by health insurance schemes or taxation.“The entire exercise of constituting a high-level expert group on universal health coverage that India has undertaken has been done at an appropriate time when the economy is growing and the country is getting wealthier as a...