Unsafe. Risky. Dangerous. No adjective may seem vile enough for Ranchi that has topped the district crime chart in Jharkhand with the highest number of murders, rapes and abductions to its credit. According to the 2010 statistics released recently by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), as many as 183 persons were killed, 92 raped and 128 kidnapped in Ranchi last year. Though the police brass find solace in the fact that...

Share of Big 5 rose to 66.49 % of all farm suicides in 2010 The five States with the largest share of the quarter-of-a-million farm suicides recorded in India over the past 16 years are Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. While the total number of farmers who took their own life in 2010 showed a dip from the preceding year, the share of the Big 5, in fact, rose...

About conviction, the less said the better New figures released by the National Crime Records Bureau show India's two largest cities accounted for one-third of the rape cases registered in 2010, and underline depressing infirmities in the prosecution of perpetrators — just over a quarter of them were convicted. Last year, the national capital recorded 414 rape cases, the biggest number among 35 major cities monitored by the Bureau, followed by 194...

Imagine there was one changeable factor that affected virtually every measure of a country's health— including life expectancy, Crime Rates, addiction, obesity, infant mortality, stroke, academic achievement, happiness and even overall prosperity. Indeed, this factor actually exists. It's called economic inequality. A growing body of research suggests that such inequality — more so than income or absolute wealth alone — has a profound influence on a population's health, in every socioeconomic...

When put in charge, women in India are better than men at providing clean water and adequate sanitation for their communities. And despite the gains women have made in the developed world, they’re still doing about as much of the housework and childcare as women in India. The World Bank’s recently released 2012 World Development Report on gender equality and development shows progress in some areas, while in others gaps in...