Very little is known generally about operational NGOs that work closely with people on a daily basis. WHILE a good many people in the country know that the Central and State governments have a number of plans and projects to bring about development – not all of them either well-conceived or well administered – they are much less aware of the part played in the overall development process by non-governmental...

Rampur-Mathura (Uttar Pradesh): It is not yet 5 p.m. but the light has started fading in Rampur-Mathura, a village of barely 5,000 people, in Sitapur district. A group of village elders settle down comfortably in wooden chairs around a small fire lit under a tree. It is here that they gather every evening to discuss the day's events before retiring for the night. Until now, the village's busybodies used to keep...

Twenty-five children died in two villages of Jhabua district in October  Malnutrition, especially among tribals here, is much higher than in sub-Saharan Africa: Report ‘Children appear extremely weak, show malaria and dengue like symptoms and die within 4 days’ JHABUA (M.P.): Malnutrition has reached epidemic proportions in most parts of Madhya Pradesh, with children being the most vulnerable group. This, along with a general deterioration in the health conditions of children and...

Several civil society organizations and citizens who believe that a section of government and bureaucracy should not be allowed to dilute the right to information (RTI), staged a daylong protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi today (November 14, 2009) against the attempts to dilute the historical Act. (See the press release below for details) The civil society organizations, led by the National Council for the Peoples’ Right to Information...

In a recent lecture, delivered in Mumbai in memory of Nani Palkhivala, the home minister, P. Chidambaram, attacked “left-leaning intellectuals” and “human rights groups”, who, in his view, “plead the naxalite cause ignoring the violence unleashed by the naxalites on innocent men, women and children”. “Why are the human rights groups silent?” asked the home minister. The short answer is that they aren’t, and haven’t been, silent. There are very...