-The New York Times   India has 1.2 billion people, among them bankers, gurus, rag pickers, billionaires, snake charmers, software engineers, lentil farmers, rickshaw drivers, Maoist rebels, Bollywood movie stars and Vedic scholars, to name a few. Humanity runneth over. Except in one profession: India is searching for a hangman. Usually, India would not need one, given the rarity of executions. The last was in 2004. But in May, India's president unexpectedly rejected...

-The Telegraph Hundreds of Dalits embittered by a caste clash with Jats last year today vented their anger by throwing stones at police in a restricted zone, leading to a baton-charge and several arrests. The Dalits assembled this morning outside the Hisar district collector’s office to protest against cases of atrocities by Jats. They were angry because six upper-caste Jats, among the key accused in a case of Caste Violence last year,...

Whether it is in education, health or jobs, there are enormous differences in outcomes in modern India, so much so that it often seems like two countries exist within one. Economic opportunities have undoubtedly expanded for a section of India's population, but there are serious obstacles in the path of many. Nobel laureate and development economist Amartya Sen has written about the 'conversion handicap' which, quite separately from an 'earnings...

In the season of Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council too is mounting pressure on the Centre to accept its recommendations on various social sector legislations. Over the past one month, the council has handed in its versions of the food security and communal violence bills as well as four notes on land acquisition, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), protection of street vendors and the...

-The Hindu   Human rights activist Binayak Sen said here on Monday that there was no question of his being a Naxal sympathiser. “Neither am I a Naxal sympathiser nor [an] opposer of Naxals,” Dr. Sen told journalists at the Press Club. “I believe that violence, either of the state or the non-state actors, does not cure any problem,” he said. Launching a scathing attack on Salwa Judum, he said that it...