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...

-The Telegraph   The outbreak of Japanese encephalitis in and around Ranchi has assumed pandemic proportions, with authorities at Ranchi Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) reporting 12 child deaths since August 16 till date. Moreover, 36 among the 81 children admitted to the state-run hospital have been confirmed to be suffering from the mosquito-borne viral disease. All 36 are children, between the age group of five and 11 years. Japanese encephalitis, marked by high...

I got a call around midnight in the Delhi summer. It was Lingaram, the young Muria adivasi from Sameli village in Dantewada, then studying in Noida’s International Media Institute of India. Linga’s misfortunes never seem to end: first he was accused of helping the Maoists, then tortured in the police station toilet, forced to be a special police officer, then released thanks to a habeas corpus petition. In a few months,...

New research from Navdanya and from the US Union of Concerned Scientists proves that Bt cotton yields are actually a third of what Monsanto claims. Genetic engineering is not going to help feed the world, writes Vandana Shiva, but it is going to harm public health and ecosystems We have been repeatedly told that genetically engineered (GE) crops will save the world. They will save the world by increasing yields and...

At the Independent People's Tribunal in Delhi last year, a young tribal man, Lingaram Kodopi, had a question: "My family is well off, but they [security forces] accuse me of being a Naxalite. Why can't we adivasis wear a good watch or drive a car without being picked up by the police?" In September 2009, 10 men with AK-47s entered Kodopi's home in Sameli, Dantewada, Chhattisgarh. They wanted to know...