-PTI   Maoists have indicated their willingness for talks with the West Bengal government for lasting peace in tribal 'junglemahal' area, a human rights activist engaged in parleys with the Naxals said on Friday. "There are many stakeholders in junglemahal who are willing to talk to the state government... The government has already initiated some positive steps and is willing to talk (with the Maoists)," Sujato Bhadra, who was among a six-member...

A Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Sudershan Reddy and Surinder Singh Nijjar passed orders in two politically sensitive cases this week.These orders have caused much controversy over the role of judiciary in constitutional cases. In the first of the two cases, Nandini Sundar v State of Chattisgarh, the judges held that the armed deployment of ill-trained, uneducated and poor tribal youths in combat operations against Naxals by appointing them as...

Dr. Subba Reddy, my classmate at the medical college, practises in a village in Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh. A decade ago, a patient came to him for treatment of hydrocele. After examination, Dr. Reddy suggested surgery costing Rs. 500. The patient asked Dr. Reddy to refer him to a bigger hospital in a city. Dr. Reddy suggested a city hospital. After a few days, he received Rs.1,000 from the...

It is a question that journalists in India are often asked without affection. “Don’t you have anything good to say?” A positive story, a happy story? The rebuke, when it is an e-mail or an online comment in response to an unflattering article about India, is sometimes accompanied by abuses or a general description of the journalist’s mother. And it is particularly passionate when it comes from the expatriate Indian whose...

It was the writer and activist Arundhati Roy who set foreign journalists in India busily chattering recently. In an interview with Stephen Moss in the Guardian, Ms Roy was discussing the Maoist and Adavasi “resistance” to encroachment on tribal lands. Mr Moss, asked her why, “we in the West don’t hear about these mini-wars?”. Ms Roy replied: “I have been told quite openly by several correspondents of international newspapers, that...