-BBC National Highway 44 is a road with a deadly reputation. Hyderabad: It connects India's north and south and has been blamed for the deaths of an alarming number of south Indian tribal villagers who live alongside it. One such village is Peddakunta, belonging to the Mahbubnagar district of Telangana, and lying adjacent to the highway bypass. Tiny Peddakunta is easy to locate because of its reputation as the "village of highway widows". In the...

-Hindustan Times Jhabua: In the small, nondescript villages of Central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh's Jhabua district, a group of tribals have joined hands to show the way forward to sustainable future by adopting organic farming.   Two years ago, the tribals of Chhaya Paschim village in the district, about 300 kms from the state's capital Bhopal, were inspired to switch to organic farming by Mahesh Sharma, a social worker and local agriculture...

-Hindustan Times The picture of rural Indian life today that emerges from what is probably the world's largest study ever of household deprivation is sobering and sombre. It describes a massive hinterland still imprisoned in persisting endemic impoverishment, want, illiteracy and indeed hopelessness. It tells a story that every thinking and caring Indian must heed. Advocates of free markets, opposed to building a welfare state, have long argued that accelerated market-led economic...

-Scroll.in Rural landlessness, the strongest indicator of poverty, which afflicts a third of Indians, can be eradicated if the government acted on pending bills and policy recommendations. India’s economy has already crossed $2 trillion and is growing annually at around 6%. But these figures cannot hide the fact that 69% of the population is rural, and 70% of this, or nearly half of all Indians, still depend on land and land-based activities...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Marital rape could soon be an offence, if a Centre-appointed panel has its way. The Pam Rajput committee, that recently submitted its report to the women and child development (WCD) ministry, has recommended that as a pro-woman measure, marital rape should be consider an offence irrespective of the age of the wife and the relationship between the perpetrator and survivor. The recommendations will be discussed in an inter-ministerial...