Nine of 10 mud-eating children are in the last stage of malnutrition. Eight of 10 people are deprived of every national social-security net and live with starvation and hunger. The average life span is 40 In April, the Hindustan Times revealed acute deprivation in the Uttar Pradesh village of Ganne, part of the former constituency of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.   Now, a Supreme Court inquiry team that visited the area...

The suburb of Govandi in Mumbai is home to the Indian city's only rubbish dump. On any given day children work and play here, seemingly unaware of the scorching sun and the stench from the waste heaps. Among them are probably some of the 8 million children still out of school across India. Few people notice their presence. But in Govandi alone, more than 1,500 children are thought to be...

Hunger deaths present a sober reality check to Bihar government  With the National Democratic Alliance government in Bihar playing cowboys and Indians with the Centre over the number of BPL (below the poverty line) families in the State, Gaya's hunger deaths proffer a sober reality check to the government consistently serenading its schemes for the Maha Dalit community. Three years ago, 14 members of the Bhuiyyan community (a Maha Dalit sub-caste)...

A social audit on the working of the ban on child labour in the domestic and hospitality sectors reveals a sorry state of affairs.  LIKE any normal child, Illyas from Varanasi, a 13-year-old, wanted to go to a regular school and become an important man some day. But poverty forced him to start working at an eatery for Rs.200 a day so that he could feed his younger siblings. He,...

"We live on a day-to-day basis," Suraj says, as the faint sound of hammering echoes across the village. "What we earn is what we spend on our families in a day." In Ganne, just off the main road about an hour south of the city of Allahabad, this is a simple fact of life. It is home to members of a poor tribal community, who live in small huts clustered around...