-The New York Times   India has 1.2 billion people, among them bankers, gurus, rag pickers, billionaires, snake charmers, software engineers, lentil farmers, rickshaw drivers, Maoist rebels, Bollywood movie stars and Vedic scholars, to name a few. Humanity runneth over. Except in one profession: India is searching for a hangman. Usually, India would not need one, given the rarity of executions. The last was in 2004. But in May, India's president unexpectedly rejected...

-Mid-Day.com   The next time you plan to use a public toilet in Bangalore's south zone, make sure you carry a roll of tissue paper along, since the BWSSB has decided to disconnect waterlines for non-payment of bills. The public toilets in the city under the banner of Nirmala Sulabh Souchalaya has not paid bills since 2004 and the due amount has added up to Rs. 5,20,017. To make matters worse, the...

The ends may justify the means, but let's be clear - in rural India, extremes of coercion are being used to encourage toilet use Robert Chambers recently wrote that community-led total sanitation is leading to a development revolution, especially in south Asia. I agree with his assessment of sanitation's importance. In practice, however, the success of community-led efforts often hinges on the use of outright coercion. In my experience, the measures...

In his lifetime, Nigamanand, an ascetic fighting a lonely battle against quarrying activities in Uttarakhand, tried to draw the attention of the national media to an environmental disaster waiting to happen in the state. In his death, the 36-year-old Sadhu, who went into a coma and died on Wednesday following his four-month-long fast in the same hospital at Dehra Dun where Ramdev was admitted, has forced civil society, politicians and the...

-The Telegraph Tata Motors has “abandoned” the Singur project, according to the draft of a state government bill that seeks to take over the entire land leased out to the company and prospective vendors. If the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Bill, 2011, gets passed in the Assembly without any changes to the draft, it will be a matter of official record that the project has “in fact been abandoned by the...