-Open the Magazine   Villagers saw him cleaning his undergarments stained with goat blood and thought he had a sexual disease. But Arunachalam Muruganantham was only trying to make a smart, cheap sanitary pad for his wife I am perhaps the only man to have ever worn a sanitary napkin. I am the only man who understands what a woman endures during those days. The wetness. The discomfort. The constant fear of stains....

-The Hindu A petition submitted to Prof. Sukhadeo Thorat, Chairperson, NCERT Textbooks Review Committee, by leading Dalit and non-Dalit writers, scholars and activists. When NCERT's Class XI Political Science textbook, Indian Constitution at Work , came to the attention of some Dalit activists, they objected to the manner in which the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, had been depicted riding a snail representing the Constitution, with...

There are major issues at stake in the Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development to be held on 20-22 June. Yet governments of developing countries have not given adequate importance to the run-up to the conference. As has happened in the climate change negotiations, the outcome draft now under negotiation shows a concerted move to rewrite the terms of global environmental governance. There is an attempt to push through the decidedly...

11 children go missing every hour in India. This and other disturbing statistics cry out for urgent action Every hour, 11 children go missing in the country. Four of these remain untraced, concludes a nation-wide research on missing children. During 2008-10, close to 1,17,480 children were reported missing in 392 districts. Of them, 74,209 children were traced while 41, 546 remain untraced. The information has been collated by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA)...

-The Indian Express   Rich countries must stop lecturing developing countries and accelerate their own efforts to cut emissions There is no shortage of people telling India what to do on low-carbon growth, but there is a shortage of understanding of what India is doing. Even the UNDP in its recent Asia Pacific Human Development Report urges emerging economies like India to do more for climate change. If one appreciates what India’s emissions are...