Reports

For a country where health care is a sordid joke on the poor, India has something positive to show on this front. Polio, going by the law of averages, is on the verge of being eradicated from India. Only one polio case has been detected so far this year in the country, making it the longest polio-free period since eradication efforts were launched in 1995. The only case of polio reported this year (on January 13) has been from Howrah district in West Bengal compared to 39 cases in the same...

Plans are afoot to celebrate the birth of a girl on October 31 as the world’s 7 billionth child near Lucknow, the capital of India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh. Plan International is using the occasion to draw world attention to India’s growing gender gap. The world’s emerging economic superpower, estimated to overtake China to become the most populous nation by 2030, has 7 million girls ‘missing’ from its population. Hundreds of thousands of female foetuses are terminated in India...

A 30-year-old woman was repeatedly gangraped by security forces for a week during August in the Saranda forests of Jharkhand. Jawans of the anti-Naxal Cobra force captured her house, and made her to live with and cook for them. Today, she does not dare speak out against the barbarity since the jawans subsequently arrested her son for being a Maoist. She fears more for the life of her son, than speaking out against the atrocity that was heaped on her. This woman’s story is not an isolated one...

The CDM Executive Board has approved two controversial Indian mega projects: a new coal fired power plant and a hydro power plant which had recently made headlines because of its non‐additionality and the harm reportedly caused to the local population. The CDM Executive Board once again ignored criticism of environmental integrity of coal projects by approving yet another supercritical coal project. The project is part of Reliance Power Ltd, owned by Anil Ambani. Over the next 10 years the plant...

Personnel of the special task force (STF) and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) shot at and injured nine students, including a girl, during the Durga Puja celebration in Roing town of Arunachal Pradesh on Wednesday. The injured were rushed to Roing Hospital where the condition of all was said to be critical. Most of the injured were rushed to Dibrugarh hospital later that night. The forces first entered the puja premises and roughed up the students. Later, the youngsters were chased around...

Reported violence against Indian women is on the rise. But that’s not because of what you think. A recent study argues that this increase reflects growing willingness to report violence against women, rather than an increase in the incidence of crime. There’s a reason for this too: more women are involved in Indian politics than ever before. The study followed data since the 73rd Amenment to the Indian Constitution that required at least one-third of all seats in local governments to be set...

Almost half (45 per cent) of the world’s threatened sea turtle populations are found in the northern Indian Ocean. The study by top sea turtle experts have also determined that the most significant threats across all of the threatened populations of sea turtles are fisheries bycatch, accidental catches of sea turtles by fishermen targeting other species, and the direct harvest of turtles or their eggs for food or turtle shell material for commercial use. Five of the world’s 11 most threatened...

Rakesh Bardhan is all of eight, and studies in Class IV. At an age when children are full of dreams about what they want to do when they grow up, Rakesh is no different. Except that he asserts, “I’ll agitate against police and all type of torture of the government.” Rakesh is gutsy, hardened; he is also one of the leaders of the Balok Sena, the boys and girls seen on the frontlines of the anti-POSCO agitation in Odisha earlier this summer. Rakesh chants slogans, and mobilises schoolmates. But...

As much as 227 million hectares – an area the size of Western Europe – have been sold, leased or licensed in largescale land deals in the developing world since 2001, mostly by international investors. This modern-day land rush follows a drive to produce enough food for people overseas, meet damaging biofuels targets or speculate on land to make an easy profit, an Oxfam International study ‘Land and Power: The growing scandal surrounding the new wave of investments in land’ has warned. Most of...

When Kanupriya Harish took a team from Wells for India around Janadesar village in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur district, it was the routine monitoring visit of a donor agency that had supported a sanitation project in the area. Meeting over, a woman took Kanupriya aside and whispered, “It is because of you that our lives have changed.” That said, she melted away into the crowd. There was no way she could have been recognised – her face was covered, a norm for married women in the desolate landscape of...