Two sisters live in a clearing in the forest about 10 km beyond the abandoned houses and empty yards of Mukram village in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district. A third young girl cowers in the courtyard of her aunt’s house in neighbouring Tokanpalli. Between 14 and 18 years of age, Kose, Rame and Hidme (names changed) say they fled their homes in Mukram after they were sexually assaulted by Special Police Officers...

Seventeen-year-old Jayjeet Kumar of Gaya's Ghantadih village does not know much about complicated chemical reactions or for that matter, about quadratic equations, the reason being that he is only a student of Class VIII. But when it comes to taking a robust crop from minimum investment, this teenager is miles ahead of many agriculture experts. So much so that the Ghantadih boy donned the role of a farming expert on...

A series of shots rang out in the night far beyond the barricaded perimeter of the Central Reserve Police Force camp here in Chhattisgarh?s Dantewada district. For a few minutes, the sentries on duty returned fire before their guns, and the ones that sounded in the distance, fell silent. By morning, the adivasi settlements around the camp had emptied, the villagers wary of being caught and questioned by the CRPF?s morning...

"It is wrong to say that we will become a super cabinet. We are here to get the Indian bureaucracy to see reason to carry forward social projects related to areas like health, food, agriculture speedily and make sure that people like (Planning Commission deputy chairman) Montek Singh Ahluwalia gets the correct picture and figures on social issues," a member of the National Advisory Council told rediff.com. The member argued...

The June 1 announcement by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, while releasing the Report Card for the first year of the second term of the United Progressive Alliance Government, that the Food Security Bill was under preparation and that the Bill would be placed in the public domain for scrutiny and wider consultation has raised hopes about early enactment of the law to ensure the people's right to food as part...