We come to know about gender discrimination only through the media. Our knowledge about latest global or local gender reports is also media-dependent. But what do we know about the media’s own record of allowing space for women’s voice? The good news is that the mass media is beginning to come under the scanner on this count but the bad news is that the media’s own record is quite dismal. A...

The Supreme Court has said that disparaging remarks made about a person’s caste in his absence and in close confines of a home or room will not amount to an offence under the SC/ST act. Under the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, only an accused who intentionally insults or intimidates with intent to humiliate a member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe in any place...

For a poor boy from the dark heart of tribal India, constable Kartam Surya has done well. An 8th class pass from the village of Misma in South Bastar’s Dantewada district — in the so-called Maoist 'liberated zone' in Chhattisgarh — 26-year-old Surya makes sure he gives his father, a marginal farmer scratching a living from the land, enough money to live in peace and comfort. "Surya is a good son...

Leprosy has officially been eliminated in India, yet 130,000 new cases are diagnosed every year. Richard Cookson and Seyi Rhodes report on the plight of the patients shunned by society Narsappa was just 10 years old when he was told he had leprosy, but the news changed the course of his life forever. People in his Indian village immediately began to shun him and told his parents that he had to...

High-velocity winds accompanied by hailstorm and an incessant spell of rain for a couple of hours last night damaged the almost ripened wheat crop in villages across Patiala and surrounding areas. With farmers demanding a special girdwari, the administration may write to the government to look into their losses and order payment of adequate compensation. Reports reaching the district headquarters said that the hailstorm had flattened standing wheat crop in numerous...