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...

The recent crisis in the micro-finance industry, brought about by some incidents in Andhra Pradesh, has led to the development of a new concept in the Indian thinking on development — that of “responsible finance”. Responsible finance is supposed to mean financial activities by companies that make just about enough returns to stay in business and charge rates of interest on loans to the poor that are only marginally higher than what...

A lot has been said and written about the visit of Barack Obama, the President of USA to India. The corporate media was in the usual over-enthusiastic drive to bring to its readers and viewers all minute details about his visit from where he stayed and what he ate to how many warships, planes and cars accompanied him and how a whopping $200 million was spent per day for the...

Every afternoon at about four, a slight woman named Runi slips out of the cramped, airless room that she shares with her husband and their sixteen children. She skirts the drainage ditch in front of the building, then walks toward the pile of hardened dung cakes that people in this slum on the edge of the northeastern Indian city of Patna use for fuel. Dressed in a bright-yellow sari shot...

A court in India's north-eastern state of Manipur has issued arrest warrants for nine policemen charged with killing an unarmed man. The men are accused of murdering Sanjit Meitei in "cold blood" in Imphal in July 2009. A pregnant woman also died. Manipur police said Mr Meitei opened fire before police shot back in self-defence. Four other people were injured in the shooting. Video footage and photos later emerged, pointing to an unprovoked...