-ANI Humanity, harmony, good governance are ideals a democratic nation aspires to. As the world's largest democracy, India is no exception. Her lawmakers and administrators, often the brightest of her citizens, vow to serve the people and govern them with integrity. These lofty ideals, hever, hold no ground in the face of the harsh pressures of conflict, now spreading rapidly across the country. I searched for and interviewed every single individual of a...

Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, in an article on left-wing extremism (“From Tirupati to Pashupati?” The Hindu , October 14, 2011), observed candidly: “It is not the naxals who have created the ground conditions ripe for their ideology — it is the singular failure of successive governments both in the States and the Centre.” There lay the main cause of the festering sore of naxalism, often characterised as left-wing...

As many as 1,574 people were killed in custody in the past year, according to the data released by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 331 deaths being reported in both police and judicial custody. The data was submitted in the ongoing session of the Rajya Sabha in response to MP H K Dua’s query to the Ministry of Home Affairs. The record number of 316...

Social anthropologists have long used the technique of learning tribal languages and adopting tribal customs to understand tribal peoples. There’s a new class of sociology students in Chhattisgarh now — the police. Bastar police are studying tribal behaviour to recoup what they think is lost in the linguistic and cultural gap with the local population. The problems of communication, the police believe, lead to suspicion and miscommunication, and push local people...

-The Times of India   Fifty-one tigers have died in different states of India between January and December 5, 2011, according to statistics collated by a prominent wildlife NGO. A tigress shot dead outside Kaziranga Park in Assam on Monday is the latest in that list. Figures provided by Wildlife Protection Society of India show that 14 tigers perished in Uttarakhand, the highest in a single state. Karnataka takes the second place with...