The North East Students’ Organisation today demanded special constitutional status for the region to thwart the threats of increasing Chinese aggression and unabated influx from Bangladesh. NESO, the umbrella body of all student groups in the region, will soon send delegates to New Delhi to highlight the problems and hold a meeting of the Northeast MPs Forum to draw the Centre’s Attention. NESO chairman Sammujjal Bhattacharyya told reporters here that...

Jharkhand has decided to seriously monitor deaths of mothers, during child delivery or as a result of extraneous circumstances, having woken up to its dismal health record that is nowhere near the UN’s millennium goals. Jharkhand’s maternal mortality rate or MMR — the number of maternal deaths per one lakh live births in a year — stands at 371, while the national average is 312. But as a signatory to...

UNLESS THE prices of vegetables skyrocket and become a scandal — as they have over several weeks now, or as did the price of sugar last year — little in the out-of-sight world of Indian agriculture excites the imagination of the city folks, who influence, rather disproportionately, everything from government policies to newspaper content. Few of those who enjoy a hearty meal and wax lovingly on their favourite dishes can...

In a congested part of Patna, capital of India's Bihar state, stands a striking yellow building - a 100-year-old mansion that has clearly seen better days. Inside it, in a small dark room, a young bearded cleric is reading out sermons from the Muslim holy scriptures to a group of boys seated cross-legged on the floor. They are in their late teens, some are wearing skull caps and they all listen...

In the course of a speech at a public event on the eve of Women’s Day, Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan gave voice to his views on the victims of rape. “Due regard must be given to their personal autonomy since in some cases the victim may choose to marry the perpetrator or choose to give birth to a child conceived through forced intercourse,” he said in his address...