People

This ought to be slap on the face of the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government. American diplomats consider the Indian government "unwilling and unable" to "end the exploitation and victimisation" of the country’s 84 million tribal people. This will be difficult for the government to dismiss since these are revelations that have been made in the secret cables that have been released by The Hindu. The cables reveal that the American government feared this neglect "plays into the hands of Naxalites."...

The much-awaited launch of Until My Freedom Has Come - The New Intifada in Kashmir happened. The editor of the compilation, Sanjay Kak, had been warned by the publisher about people walking out of book launches quite early in the evening. That didn't happen on May 25, 2011. The Gulmohar hall at India Habitat Centre remained choc a bloc till the end. And that too with the book being already available in stores. That's what made the evening special. The recording I have here has been split into...

His misty eyes and weather-beaten face belie his age. As Mushtaq slouches back against the wall, he listens to us with a resigned look writ large on his gnarled visage. He gives the impression that we are engaged in a futile discussion. A second look at him, and you will wonder whether he’s just waiting for the ordeal to tide over. He probably is. He, today, does not have a life. He has not a livelihood worth the name. Mushtaq was once an artisan who worked with furs; today he is just another...

One year after the death of the last member of the Bo tribe of the Andaman Islands, Survival International has warned that the neighbouring Jarawa tribe is also in danger. Boa Sr, the last of the Bo, died last January aged around 85. The Jarawa tribe number 365 people, and fiercely resisted contact with outsiders until 1998. Now an illegal road cuts through the Jarawa’s rainforest, and poachers and tourists invade their land. Poachers steal the animals the Jarawa need to survive and, like the...

Amnesty International and Mexican actor Gael García Bernal have launched a series of films depicting the plight of irregular migrants in Mexico. The four films are being called The Invisibles (Los Invisibles). The premiere of The Invisibles, which record the journey of hundreds of migrants from the border between Guatemala and Mexico on their way to the United States, coincides with the start of this year’s Global Forum on Migration and Development, taking place in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The...

An epidemic, suspected to be malaria, has killed dozens of people of the Yanomami tribe in the Venezuelan Amazon. Leaders of the three villages told health workers that around 50 people have died so far, many of them children. "There are still many, many sick people," Andres Blanco told the Associated Press (AP) over telephone from Puerto Ayacucho in southern Venezuela. Blanco, a Yanomami health worker in a government program for the indigenous communities, alerted regional officials this month...

Some believe in love at first sight, some think it is nothing more than literary trope. But if you were looking for a scientific argument to believe in it, researchers have come up with numbers ― it takes a fraction of a second to fall in love. A team of researchers from Syracuse University has found that when a person falls in love, 12 areas of the brain work in tandem to release euphoria-inducing chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopression. The love feeling also affects...

Survival International has named its ‘Top 5 Hall of Shame’ – the key companies violating tribal peoples’ rights worldwide. But Vedanta Resources has missed out by a whisker – more by default, than by design. After the Indian government scrapped its mining project in the Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa, it is not getting the chance to trample on tribal peoples. But there are others who continue to do so with impunity around the world. Survival International has named them in its Top 5 Hall of Shame...

It is not a very comforting to be told time and again how much of a hungry nation we are. The Global Hunger Index (GHI) does just that. Published by the International Food Policy Research Institute, it goes one up on The State of Food Insecurity in the World report released by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) by putting things in perspective. India stands 67th among 84 developing countries in this index – the lower rung you are on the ladder, the more hungry you...

The Internet is catching them real young. At a time when privacy issues are being widely debated, a survey in the US has found that 92 percent of children in the country have some type of online presence by the time they are two years old. Corresponding figures for the European too are high. Seventy-three percent of parents in the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany, and Italy said they have been sharing images of their infants online. The study, conducted by Internet security company AVG...