The family of an Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer has received threats and faced protests from her caste group and a section of the village panchayat in Haryana’s Bhiwani district for her decision to marry outside her caste. Neelam Sharma, who is currently posted at the Indian mission in Moscow, is set to marry IAS officer Kuldeep Yadav in Delhi on November 8. Yadav, whom Sharma met during training, is currently...

What kept Prime Minister Manmohan Singh busy after securing minister A Raja’s resignation on the night of November 14 last year?   He was writing a reply to National Advisory Council chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s letter on the practice of manual scavenging. On November 15, he wrote to her that he was asking the Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment to “examine how to strengthen” implementation of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and...

When Munni arrived in this fertile, sugarcane-growing region of north India as a young bride years ago, little did she imagine she would be forced into having sex and bearing children with her husband's two brothers who had failed to find wives. "My husband and his parents said I had to share myself with his brothers," said the woman in her mid-40s, dressed in a yellow sari, sitting in a village...

Nearly one-fifth of Indian Police Service (IPS) officers in the country -- including police chiefs of Delhi, Bihar, Sikkim and Uttar Pradesh - have not declared their annual immovable property returns (IPR) for 2010 despite three deadlines given to them by the home ministry. Their action will now put them in the negative list of vigilance clearance for future postings. After the latest deadline of October 10 went by, the ministry...

It has been a long and difficult road to justice for the tribal residents of this village in Tamil Nadu's Dharmapuri district The injustice done to the tribal people of India is a shameful chapter in our country's history. The tribals were called ‘rakshas' (demons), ‘asuras', and what not. They were slaughtered in large numbers, and the survivors and their descendants were degraded, humiliated, and all kinds of atrocities inflicted on...