In Maharashtra’s drought-hit Satara district, a cattle camp has come to the rescue of women and their cattle, writes Sameena Dalwai. Mann taluka in Satara district is ground zero for the drought now ravaging interior Maharashtra. The only cattle camp in the vicinity, being run by the Mann Deshi Mahila Bank and Foundation, provides a snap distress. This region, known as ‘Manndesh’ in Marathi folklore, falls in the rain shadow area...

-Live Mint To maintain his constant stream of RTI petitions, Agrawal says he gets ideas from day-to-day observations, news reports, government insiders, whistle-blowers and journalists. In the summer of 1985, a cloth merchant in Chandni Chowk, the crowded market in the old quarters of Delhi, received a call in response to a letter he had written to the papers asking why his favourite weekly television serial, Rajani, could not be aired daily...

In Kalyan a Muslim youth Bilal Shaikh was slaped with a non boilable cognizable offense (May 2012) under section 333, after he jumped the traffic signal. He was assaulted brutally by the police for having arguments with them, suffered a fracture in right arm and was in jail for eight days. The policemen who beat him up got released with the non cognizable warrant. Another Muslim youth Mohammad Amir Khan, age...

In September 2010, a large public meeting was held in Guwahati to discuss the impact of large hydroelectric projects in the Northeast. In attendance was Jairam Ramesh, then the minister of environment and forests in the government of India. Ramesh heard that the people of Assam were worried that the hundred and more dams being planned in Arunachal Pradesh would reduce water-flows, increase the chance of floods, and deplete fish...

Autistic people stand to benefit in terms of schooling, jobs and welfare projects if a new disability act that is being drafted is enacted into law. The Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995, does not include autism but the government plans to cover the condition in the revised act, accepting a longstanding demand from social activists. Autism is now covered under the National Trust for the Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy,...