The Right to Information (RTI) Act finally seems to be serving its purpose: empowering citizens with information which they can use to demand justice. Reeling under an attack on their houses, a group of 13 displaced tribal families from remote Bhadrachalam used the RTI Act to find out the status of the land on which they had constructed their huts a year ago. Armed with this information, they have now...

The fact-finding team set up by the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) last month to probe allegations of violations of the Forest Rights Act by Posco, the Korean steel major, for its proposed project in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur district, will visit the site on Friday and Saturday. The team is led by Meena Gupta, a former secretary of this ministry and also of the tribal affairs one. The other members...

It's the untold tale of a village in the grip of the feudal system, and a quiet revolt brewing. Budihalli village of Karnataka's Chitradurga district is a glaring example of caste discrimination and bondage, with a yawning gap between communities. Here, landlords hold sway. They allegedly rape and torture women of lower castes while the men work as bonded labourers, paying off debts accumulated over generations. Breaking the stranglehold, 25...

Taking a serious view of the Haryana Government's failure to arrest the perpetrators of atrocities against the Dalits of Mirchpur village, the Supreme Court on Thursday directed the State to arrest by this coming Monday all those who are wanted in the case by the police. A Bench of Justice G. S. Singhvi and Justice A. K. Ganguly is hearing a writ petition filed by Jaswant Singh and others seeking relief...

Despite growing threat to food security from global warming, India is busy acq-uiring fertile lands for industries and infrastructure. Something terrible is happening to the weather. And it is happening right across our home. From the cold desert of Ladakh to the plains of Bihar and Jharkhand, extreme weather conditions have played havoc. In neighbouring Pakistan, unprecedented floods, and that too in the arid region of Sindh, have hit more than...