-The Indian Express Firebrand leader who rose swiftly till downfall She rose swiftly through the ranks, having made her mark as a firebrand leader who had saffron politics as part of her legacy. Mayaben Surendrabhai Kodnani, convicted of murder, conspiracy and spreading communal hatred, is the daughter of a staunch RSS worker who had suffered the pains of Partition, moving from Tharparkar in Sind province to Deesa in Gujarat. Kodnani, the first sitting...

-The Indian Express The arc of history may finally be bending towards justice for the victims of communal violence that gripped Gujarat in 2002. Thirty-two people, including Maya Kodnani, formerly women and child development minister in the Narendra Modi government, and Babu Bajrangi, a Bajrang Dal leader, were convicted by a special court in Gujarat for their roles in the Naroda Patiya massacre in Ahmedabad. This is the first time, after exhaustive...

The Guwahati molestation incident throws light on the violence women face overtly and covertly in India, at home and outside. The shocking incident of the beating and molestation of a young woman by a mob in Guwahati in Assam on July 9 has exposed the ugly underbelly of modern, globalised India, where women face violence, covertly and overtly, at home and outside. The incident has also exposed the lackadaisical manner in...

-Business Today "I want it back," says Sharada Begum. The 67-year-old woman is a member of one of the 100 households of Raghubir Nagar, a resettlement colony in west Delhi, chosen to participate in a pilot scheme that aimed to turn the public distribution system (PDS) on its head. Through all of 2011, these households had Rs 1,000 transferred every month to a woman member's bank account in lieu of rice, wheat,...

-The Hindu The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved a proposal to replace the word “rape” with the phrase “sexual assault”, making it a gender-neutral offence and identified acid attacks as a separate offence punishable by a maximum of ten years. Union Minister for Women & Child Development (WCD) Krishna Tirath confirmed that the Cabinet had given the go-ahead to the draft proposal. “Besides the two proposals that have been accepted, it has...