A decade after post-Godhra riots polarised voters on communal lines in Gujarat, Chief Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a third straight term in office largely on the development plank as he battles traditional rival Congress and a rebel BJP heavy
Right to education may have become a reality for some but there are many still out of its ambit. These are children belonging to areas affected by civil strife, who continue to face absence of schools and teachers in their localities. The
“Tonight, we will have a meeting in the village. Mohansinh-bhai (Rathwa, the Congress candidate) is coming,” Suresh Rathwa told me. Suresh, a soft-spoken young farmer, runs a grocery shop, leads the pack of Achhala village’s foll
India and China are moving sensibly in the right direction on the border issue but no immediate result is expected from the talks as they are "very complicated" and "sensitive", External Affair Minister Salman Khurshid said on
It was 8.30 pm and the village was waiting for Anirudh Jadeja from Rajkot. An old associate of Sadbhavna Manch chief Kanubhai Kalsaria, Jadeja had played a vital role in rallying villagers against Nirma, a company that proposed to open a cement fa
The Madras High Court on Monday quashed a non-bailable arrest warrant against Union Minister M K Alagiri`s son Durai Dayanidhi and granted him anticipatory bail in the alleged multi-crore illegal granite quarrying scam. Granting the relief
Campaigning for Gujarat elections has entered the fast lane as Tuesday is the last day for the parties to woo voters for the first phase of state Assembly polls to be held on December 13. Congress president Sonia Gandhi will be addressing
New characters, new script Motormouth Navjot Singh Sidhu went one up on Modi during his campaign tour of Gujarat when he termed former chief minister Keshubhai Patel a traitor. The 84-year-old veteran, who 11 years ago had
As BS Yeddyurappa takes baby steps in organising his new political party, the Karnataka Janata Paksha, he could well be looking for the skill sets in a person similar to that of Ananth Kumar, the very man whom he holds, singularly, responsible for
The ‘Human Rights in India – Status Report 2012’ (Updated and Revised) is not something to be read by the weak hearted, for such are the truths it reveals to the reader. The report, put together by the Working Group on Human Righ
Children in various apartments of Rajnagar Extension area of Ghaziabad share at least one thought with the kids in Karera village, which lies bang opposite — that the Hindon river which flows in between them has black water, a very foul smel
On the condition of confidentiality, a sarpanch of Sheragada block in Odisha’s Ganjam district shared some secrets about the MNREGS works. He said over a period of two months ending in June this year he got a pond renovated under the
Government on Friday won the approval of Parliament to its controversial decision of allowing FDI in multi-brand retail with a motion against it being defeated convincingly in Rajya Sabha, as BSP voted in favour of UPA. 123 members voted a
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener Arvind Kejriwal and over 100 supporters were detained by Delhi Police on Friday afternoon from outside chief minister Sheila Dikshit’s residence on a day his mentor, social activist Anna Hazare, was hospital
After heated discussions on the provision of primary education and the need for allotting land for scheduled caste and adivasi communities, the ongoing National Conference of Dalit Organisations here discussed the challenges and opportunities in b
A week after a government white paper on irrigation gave Ajit Pawar a clean chit, the senior NCP leader was on Friday sworn-in as Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister. Pawar, the nephew of NCP president and Union Minister Sharad Pawar, was sw
First, a bit of theory. Marshall McLuhan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan), a Canadian expert on communication, coined the phrase ‘the medium is the message’ in
If what you are going to read sounds too starry-eyed, it is deliberate and for good reasons. In my 20-plus years of reporting on governance and watching bureaucrats function from close quarters, I haven’t come across an officer who would be
Changi Devi Aharwal, a young woman from Madhya Pradesh, has done something that not many people from the dalit community back in her village have been able to do: she sends her little daughter to school. But the high of seeing the next gen
After calling UPA government “lame duck”, the leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley termed UPA’s FDI argument “vague and flawed”. Saying that FDI in retail will kill manufacturing jobs and that the
