Breaking decades of silence over unjust social norms, widowed, abandoned and destitute women from different states in India came together at the national capital to launch the National Forum for Single Women's Rights to demand food, healthcare, employment and rights to property. It has been more than eight years since the January 2001 earthquake struck the Indian state of Gujarat, but Hansa Rathore still cannot quite shake off memories of...

It is rare nowadays to come across people of unflinching and unquestionable integrity. It is even rarer to find in such people a strong sense of personal and intellectual honesty that demands that they interrogate their own actions and arguments with as much sincerity as they turn on others. And it is rarest of all to find such people engaged in public life, where they would constantly have to face...

Here’s a hypothetical, though not altogether unfamiliar, scenario that academic and writer Sunil Khilnani invoked in a lecture at the British Museum to warn against what he called the “paradox of India’s new prosperity.” He asked his audience to imagine two traffic lanes, both at a standstill. After a while traffic in one of the lanes starts moving raising hopes of those stuck in the next lane that they, too,...

Output and Growth     According to the [inside]Economic Survey 2017-18, Volume-2[/inside] (please click here to access): • The growth rates of agriculture & allied sectors have been fluctuating at 1.5 per cent in 2012-13, 5.6 per cent in 2013-14, (-) 0.2 per cent in 2014-15, 0.7 per cent in 2015-16 and 4.9 per cent in 2016-17. • The Gross Capital Formation (GCF) in Agriculture and Allied Sectors relative to Gross Value Added (GVA) in...

KEY TRENDS    • The total number of civilians killed and injured during police firing in 2016 was 92 and 351, respectively. The total number of civilians killed and injured during police lathi-charge in 2016 was 35 and 759, respectively #$   • In 2015, the NCRB recorded over 73 lakh complaints of cognizable crimes. Cognizable crimes are relatively serious offences for which police officers do not need a warrant from the magistrate to investigate, such...