-The Indian Express On Tuesday morning, Lukumoni Orang gave birth to a baby boy. Less than 12 hours later, she was running through paddy fields, holding the infant close to her chest, chased by suspected NDFB(S) militants firing their AK-series weapons. A resident of Milanpur village, near Sonajuli-Phulbari, where the armed militants struck on Tuesday evening, Lukumoni is among the many Adivasis who have taken shelter at the Tinisuti Middle School, about...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A government panel that evaluated Muslims' post-Sachar socio-economic conditions has suggested an anti-discrimination law, targeted mainly at employers, to combat the growing disparity between the community and the rest of the country. The committee, headed by Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Amitabh Kundu, has failed to detect any "sea change on the ground" despite several welfare plans being launched for the community after Sachar's late-2006 report. Like Sachar, the Kundu...

-The Hindu The deaths of Chaiti Bai and other women after a botched tubectomy in Chhattisgarh are an opportunity to reflect on the problems India faces in the pursuit of modernity and global status, especially in health and education A sudden death always has great pedagogical value. The death of Chaiti Bai, a Baiga tribal woman, following a botched tubectomy at a mass sterilisation camp in Chhattisgarh recently, can improve our perspective...

-The Hindu Without adequate preparations for its consequences, the State has gone ahead with the merger of small schools with the larger ones. Is there a way out? The Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani's act of consulting an astrologer in Rajasthan may be a personal choice, but her mention of possible amendments to the Right to Education (RTE) Act has definitely created a mess in the State. While she has...

-The Hindu To address climate change, India has committed itself to a 20-25 per cent reduction in intensity of carbon emissions by 2020, but the international community will want more U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping have just signed a historic bilateral accord on climate change and clean energy cooperation in Beijing. This accord will have impacts in the run-up to the Paris Conference in December 2015 when the...