‘Our police are capable of shouldering tasks with capacity and calibre' Some parts of Kashmir may soon be free from the Disturbed Areas Act (DAA), thus paving the way for the withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), a long pending demand of political parties and human rights groups. An indication to this effect was given by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah at a police commemoration day function at Zewan, near...

It has been a long and difficult road to justice for the tribal residents of this village in Tamil Nadu's Dharmapuri district The injustice done to the tribal people of India is a shameful chapter in our country's history. The tribals were called ‘rakshas' (demons), ‘asuras', and what not. They were slaughtered in large numbers, and the survivors and their descendants were degraded, humiliated, and all kinds of atrocities inflicted on...

-The Hindustan Times   A day after he quit Team Anna, activist Rajendra Singh accused Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal of autocratic behaviour and expressed unhappiness over politicisation of the India Against Corruption campaign.  In an exclusive interview to HT, Singh said, "I have left the core team. But I will continue to campaign against corruption in various spheres of life."  Singh, a Magsaysay award winner for his work on water conservation in Rajasthan,...

-AP Severe stress on food, water and jobs She's a 40-year-old mother of eight, with a ninth child due soon. The family homestead in a Burundi village is too small to provide enough food, and three of the children have quit school for lack of money to pay required fees. “I regret to have made all those children,” says Godelive Ndageramiwe. “If I were to start over, I would only make two or...

In the brown smog that covers Manesar this late autumn, large trucks that pack half-a-dozen cars each into their containers queue on the broken highway from Delhi to Jaipur and park any which way they can. Their drivers loll in the teashops and dhabas. Few know when their containers will be loaded with Maruti Suzuki’s deliverables: cars named Swift and Dzire and A-Star and Sx4 that have been booked by tens...