Time magazine picked him as one of 100 people shaping our world. Today, he’s held responsible for bringing an exciting, inspirational business into disrepute. Oh, and his wife says he beat her and snatched their son. There could not be a more controversial torchbearer than Vikram Akula for an industry as quintessentially Indian as microfinance, the business of providing the poor with loans, as small as R5,000, secured not with...

The Adarsh housing scam, which has already cost Ashok Chavan his job as Maharashtra chief minister, is sinking to still more embarrassing depths as investigators comb carefully through the claims of its promoters, who invoked the names of Kargil heroes and war widows to extract clearances. Did any Kargil hero actually get a flat in Adarsh? In 2002, the society had listed two members — out of a total of 71...

Every afternoon at about four, a slight woman named Runi slips out of the cramped, airless room that she shares with her husband and their sixteen children. She skirts the drainage ditch in front of the building, then walks toward the pile of hardened dung cakes that people in this slum on the edge of the northeastern Indian city of Patna use for fuel. Dressed in a bright-yellow sari shot...

Civil rights activist Irom Sharmila Chanu on Tuesday completed ten years of her fast-unto-death demanding withdrawal of the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), 1958, from Manipur. A spokesperson of Sharmila Kanba Lup (Save Sharmila Committee) said several social organisations were on Tuesday organising sit-in protests in different parts of the state to show solidarity with Sharmila who began her fast after ten civilians were killed in an alleged...

The Aadhaar or UID project has grave implications for every Indian. It will enable the government to profile every citizen and track their movements and transactions. There is no guarantee that intimate personal information -- pre-existing illnesses, romantic relationships etc -- won't be shared with other agencies, warns Praful Bidwai. An elaborate charade has begun with the rolling out of the first Aadhaar unique identity numbers in a tribal district of Maharashtra by...