-The Times of India Believe it or not, the murder rate in India in the past few years has been at its lowest level since the 1960s. Even the absolute number of murders in 2014 was lower than in 1992, the year when the murder rate (number of murders per lakh of population) was at its highest. The counter-intuitive fact emerges from an analysis of data from the National Crime Records Bureau's...

-The Hindu A recent sting video shows the men acquitted in the Laxmanpur Bathe case boasting about the same massacre. Will the passing of the Prevention of Atrocities (Amendment) Bill finally change the way justice is delivered to Dalits? On the night of December 1, 1997, in Laxmanpur Bathe, a village in Bihar’s Arwal district 90 km from Patna, 58 Dalits were slaughtered by a gang of dominant caste men that went...

-Economic and Political Weekly While insufficient sanitation facilities often get represented in statistics and are reported in the literature on urban infrastructure planning and contested urban spaces, what is often left out is the everyday practice and experience of going to dysfunctional toilets, particularly by women. By analysing the practices and problems associated with toilet use from a phenomenological perspective, this article aims to situate the issue in the everyday lives...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Traders and stockists seem to be making a killing as onion prices have soared across the country in the past 2-3 weeks. The staple kitchen item was selling at around Rs 80 per kg in the market in Delhi, as a substantial jump in prices was reported from Delhi's wholesale mandis. Prices of pulses have also gone up considerably in the past three weeks. Now there...

-The Hindustan Times The skyrocketing prices of onions, a key ingredient used in making dishes ranging from curries to biryanis, reflects India’s inability to insulate staples from weather-induced supply disturbances. On Thursday onions traded at Rs 4,900 a quintal (or Rs 49 a kg) at Lasalgaon in Maharashtra, India’s largest wholesale market for the crop. Inadequate supplies have pushed up prices sharply over the last few weeks. Already, retail onion prices have...