Reports

Minutes after I had put up a status message on Facebook saying that I was planning to pen first-hand accounts of domestic violence survivors, I was flooded with messages. Among those who responded was my friend, Nargis Yousuf *, from Bangalore. Er, was she a victim? No. But she had an account of someone. “Would you need the person to narrate it herself? As in, meet her?”, she asked. I thought otherwise. “But she won’t be able to speak to you here (on Facebook).”, Nargis added. So, was this...

More than four persons per day were killed in police and judicial custody in India between 2001 and 2010. The total of 14,231 persons includes 1,504 deaths in police custody and 12,727 deaths in judicial custody from 2001-2002 to 2009-2010 as per the cases submitted to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). The New Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights in its report, Torture in India 2011, released today said that a large majority of these deaths were a direct consequence of torture in...

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is not just an environmental group — it is a monolith. It is also a big brand. And like all big corporate brands, it manages its media coverage quite well. There's so much of positive stories there to be read in the print media or seen on television, that you don't even know that there's a dark underbelly somewhere. Things, in fact,are so murky that your faith in the hitherto thought of as venerable NGO will stand shaken. Probably, for good. Just as most negative...

The state government in Manipur is forcefully evicting families living on Loktak. Since Tuesday, the state police has used brute force to chase alleged illegal settlers away from their homes, including burning nearly 200 huts. It is being alleged that the eviction is in fact a security operation, and not to preserve the environment under the controversial Loktak Lake (Protection) Act, 2006, as claimed. State government officials started burning down floating huts, khangpokshang, built over...

An ill-conceived move by the Karnataka government allowing the extension of working hours for women working in the IT industry in Bangalore is drawing flak both from women and IT professionals. IT companies in Bangalore at a recent conference had adopted a resolution urging the government to extend working hours deadline for female employees to 10 pm. Till now IT/ITeS companies were responsible for providing transport to female employees after 8 pm. "Extending the deadline will make them...

If the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was still looking for obvious signs of a slowdown, it cannot get find another better than this one. India's new car sales in October fell the most in more than a decade in the face of rising fuel costs, expensive loans, and prolonged inflationary pressures. Sales of passenger cars were down 23.8 per cent, while production dropped 28.1 per cent when compared to the same period last year, according to the Society of Indian Automobile...

Wipro has retained the top slot in environmental NGO Greenpeace's latest Guide to Greener Electronics. HCL Infosystem is placed second in the Indian version. The international version ranks the IT manufacturing company HP at the top, taking the lead over Dell and Nokia. Three new companies are included in the latest version of the guide. Research in Motion (RIM), manufacturer of the Blackberry phone, is included in the international version while Chirag Computers and SAI InfoSystem are included...

Almost one in four Right to Information (RTI) rejections in India have been made by the Ministry of Finance, according to the RTI Annual Return Reports for 2005-2010. Adjusted for the number of requests received, the Finance Ministry tops the rejection rate at 24 per cent, followed by the Prime Minister’s Office (12 per cent) and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (11 per cent), an analysis of the reports by the PRS Legislative Research (PRS) has revealed. The Finance Ministry possibly...

India is simply not doing enough for its women. The country has fallen by one rank &mdash from 112 out of 134 countries in 2010 to 113 out of 135 countries &mdash according to the Gender Gap Index 2011 released by the World Economic forum (WEF) on Wednesday. Over the last six years, while 85 per cent of countries are improving their gender equality ratios, for the rest of the world the situation is declining, most notably in several African and South American countries. The sixth annual World...

Things are not improving in India at all. In fact, things are going from bad to worse. India's rank in the Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has fallen from 119 in 2010 to 134 this year. India’s HDI value for 2011 is 0.547—in the medium human development category—positioning the country at 134 out of 187 countries and territories. Between 1980 and 2011, India’s HDI value increased from 0.344 to 0.547, an increase of 59.0 per cent or average annual...