The 2009 Parliamentary election returned the Congress party to power with more seats than even the most optimistic predictions. From 145 seats in 2004, the Congress increased its tally to 206 seats. No doubt, the five-year UPA rule had been characterised by unprecedented growth, but this is too simplistic an explanation since the Congress’s performance varied widely across the states in the elections. For instance, it won just nine out...

Only around 6% of cases filed against doctors involved in sex-selection practices in the 17 states, which have the most skewed sex ratio, have ended up in convictions till date. According to Union health ministry's latest data — prepared for a crucial meeting of health secretaries of the 17 states on Wednesday — a total of 805 cases have been filed in court against doctors till March 31, ever since the...

Late last month we received the exciting news that India now has a population of 1.21 billion. This figure generated less discussion than I expected. Maybe it would have been more mind-boggling a few months ago, before all the scams and scandals inured us to the large number of zeros that a billion signifies. Or maybe we were distracted by the other bad news in the census results — the...

Mohammed Mahboob Alam walks slowly towards a small grave in the corner of a cemetery in northwest Delhi. He is not related to the ten-year-old who was buried there on Saturday. But he cannot stop thinking about him. When a group of 20 people arrived at the cemetery with the child's body, Mr Alam was unnerved by their apparent haste to bury the boy. Mr Alam is on the committee of...

Investigation in the Hasan Ali case has reached a crucial stage with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) deciding to question Puducherry lieutenant governor Iqbal Singh and UP chief minister Mayawati's principal secretary Vijay Shankar Pandey in the $8 billion money-laundering probe. While summons were issued to Iqbal Singh on Friday, ED is likely to issue notice to Pandey in the next few days asking him to appear for questioning, sources said. Faced with...