I remember being disturbed enough to stop watching the 2003 Hindi movie Matrubhumi(motherland). Set in the future, it depicted an Indian village populated only by men. It gets that way after a man, yearning for a boy, publicly drowns his newborn girl in a vat of milk, sparking a custom that wipes out women. So the men watch porn, fornicate with farm animals. A father marries his five sons to...

The present situation is different from that of 2007-2008, although recent climatic events may significantly reduce agricultural production next season. Must history always repeat itself? We are indeed on the verge of what could turn out to be another major food crisis. The FAO Food Price Index at the end of 2010 returned to its highest level. Drought in Russia and the export restrictions adopted by the government, together with...

The government's biggest welfare programme could see an almost 60 per cent increase in funding. The forthcoming Budget is likely to make a provision of Rs 64,000 crore (Rs 640 billion) for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in 2011-12, against Rs 40,100 crore (Rs 401 billion) in the current fiscal. The huge increase in outlay will be mainly on account of two factors: Linking wages under the scheme with...

In violation of Supreme Court directions, 28 persons are being kept in solitary confinement in various jails all over the country. Information under Right to Information (RTI) Act obtained by Navkiran Singh, a lawyer practising in Punjab and Haryana High Court, reveals that West Bengal has the maximum number of prisoners kept ‘illegally’ in solitary confinement. While West Bengal has 16 such prisoners, Rajasthan and Jharkhand have three each. As per...

A delegation of European Union observers was today allowed by Chhattisgarh High Court to witness proceedings on rights activist Binayak Sen’s appeal against his life term in a case of sedition, which his lawyer and BJP MP Ram Jethmalani termed “political persecution”. When Sen’s appeal came up for hearing, a division bench of Justices T.P. Sharma and R.L. Jhanwar considered the reference on the EU team’s proposal made by the state...