As a national debate rages over the Indian poverty line, in the heart of Bandra, one of Mumbai’s richest suburbs, in a shanty with barely enough standing space for two adults, three-year-old Priya Doiphode, clad in a red tee shirt, lies listless on a string bed. Priya is one of the 83,243 children in Mumbai who are malnourished, according to government data, a statistic that makes Mumbai the most malnourished...

After the visually-challenged RTI activist Ratna Ala, another RTI crusader from Valsad, Ketan Shah has lodged a complaint stating that he has been threatened for his activism by the chief officer of Valsad nagarpalika and senior officers in the district administration. For Shah, major shock came after the nagarpalika passed a resolution — a copy is with TOI — in the general body meeting on October 19 to blacklist him and...

Inefficiency, the global financial meltdown and rising food prices have conspired to reverse progress made on poverty and hunger Head out of Delhi, across the fetid Yamuna river, with the tourist sites behind you and the northern Indian plains in front of you. Go past the new, luxury flats built for the Commonwealth Games, turn right and follow the lines of the new metro and then plunge left, avoiding the chaotic...

Ravi Gulati left a corporate job and took to teaching children of drivers, barbers and maids near his home in New Delhi's Khan Market. Today, in his unusual classroom every student is a teacher and every teacher a student. "I don't expect the kids to pay me back but pay it forward," says the man who has turned his home into a learning centre for the poor. A Ganesh Nadar...