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 government's new guidelines for cybercafes will deepen the digital divide while doing nothing to curb terrorism. Following last month's tragic bomb blast at the Delhi High Court, in which over 13 people were killed, police traced an email from the ‘Harkat-ul-Jihad' claiming responsibility for the attack to a cybercafe in Kishtwar, Jammu and Kashmir, and arrested three people, including the owner. In fact, many recent terrorist attacks have been linked to...

A tiny road flanked by lush turmeric and maize fields veers off the state highway from Dharmapuri to Harur in Tamil Nadu towards Vachathi, a tribal village that has hungered for justice for nearly two decades after an irreparable tragedy destroyed its peace. Nineteen years ago, a large team of Tamil Nadu Police and officers from the forest and revenue departments swooped down on the village nestled in the foothills...

The National Food Security Bill, 2011, designed to make access to food a legal right, is the last chance to convert Gandhiji's vision of a hunger-free India into reality. What Mahatma Gandhi said of the role of food in a human being's life in a 1946 speech at Noakhali, now in Bangladesh, remains the most powerful expression of the importance of making access to food a basic human right. Gandhiji also...

The Planning Commission's laughable estimates of the ‘poverty line' follow from a mistake in method that it made 30 years ago and has clung to ever since. The affidavit that the Planning Commission recently submitted before the Supreme Court stating that a person is to be considered ‘poor' only if his or her monthly spending is below Rs.781 (Rs.26 a day) in the rural areas and Rs.965 (Rs.32 a day) in...