We come to know about gender discrimination only through the Media. Our knowledge about latest global or local gender reports is also Media-dependent. But what do we know about the Media’s own record of allowing space for women’s voice? The good news is that the mass Media is beginning to come under the scanner on this count but the bad news is that the Media’s own record is quite dismal. A...

He dreamt of becoming a successful lawyer. Hailing from Jalgoan, it isn't surprising that his career was destined to be elsewhere. Today, 40-year old Hemchandra Dagaji Patil has no regrets. "The black coat beckoned me. I used to imagine myself in court rooms but finally my father persuaded me to stay back in the village as there was a drop in crop yield and there was no one to look after the...

For a poor boy from the dark heart of tribal India, constable Kartam Surya has done well. An 8th class pass from the village of Misma in South Bastar’s Dantewada district — in the so-called Maoist 'liberated zone' in Chhattisgarh — 26-year-old Surya makes sure he gives his father, a marginal farmer scratching a living from the land, enough money to live in peace and comfort. "Surya is a good son...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed its two Commissioners N.C. Saxena and Harsh Mander and the Collector of Dantewada to visit the villages of Tadmetla, Morapalli and Timapuram in Chhattisgarh, where food scarcity and hunger deaths were reported, and to give a report to the court. A Bench of Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice Deepak Verma gave this direction during the course of hearing of a petition filed by the People's...

A 13-member fact-finding team that visited Chintalnar, Morapally, Timmapuram and Tadmetla villages of Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh has found that the police claim that they had an encounter with Maoists in the jungles of Dantewada during March second week as “a hoax and far from reality.” “We have been inside these areas for two days, only to see that there was no ‘encounter' with Maoists as claimed by the police, which...