-The Times of India Jitendra Choudhury will probably never forget March 2, 2013, the day he was hung from a tree for beating his wife. A kangaroo court in Bokaro held at the behest of JMM legislator Jagannath Mahto reportedly meted out this medieval-style justice after his wife complained that he often got drunk and misbehaved with her. Primitive, powerful and potent, large swathes of India are still governed by kangaroo courts...

-The Times of India JABALPUR: When Rajkumar Ahirwar accepted an offer on March 13 to go to the neighborhood adda (local pub) from Deepak Rajak, a casual acquaintance, he had little idea what awaited him. The 22-year-old from Ashok Nagar woke up from his drunken stupor in a government district hospital the next day with a certificate in his pocket that said he had been vasectomised. In a bid to achieve sterilisation...

-The Hindu Hundreds of undertrials languish in overcrowded south Chhattisgarh prisons even as their trial proceeds sluggishly, says an RTI reply With most information regarding prisons closely guarded in the country, in conflict zones — some north-eastern States, Kashmir or Chhattisgarh — it is even more so. The only information about prisons that percolates to public space is about how inmates are becoming master painters, singers or dance drama designers. While those...

-The Times of India It is budget time once again. Far away from the talk of lakhs and crores of rupees echoing from Parliament to television studios, a thin adivasi teenage girl stands in a queue at her hostel, her plate in her hand, waiting for her share of the gruel that she is given for lunch every day. Her family depends on the money from the minor forest produce her...

-The Economist A steadily rising Muslim population continues to fall behind IT TELLS you something hopeful perhaps that, for all the horror unleashed when two bombs laid by presumed militant Islamists ripped through a crowd in Hyderabad on February 21st, India’s public response has been muted. The blasts killed 16 and injured 117. Both the method of the attack (bombs in metal tiffin boxes strapped to bicycles) and its location (near a...