The Don of Dhanbad
Dhanbad’s dreaded Mafia gangs were riveting topics of conversation last fortnight, and for different reasons. Film actor Shatrughan Sinha, with the blessings of the ruling…
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My Years in an Indian Prison Mary Tyler
So much is being written about political prisoners in India these days, that the layman might succumb to the temptation of focusing more on the issue…
Reading The Bar Codes
“UPON MY WORD: India’s prisons are stuck in a time warp Strange how time’s machine travels back and forth at warp speed. Two hundred and…
The Big Squeeze
From the Editor Turkmenistan’s “President for Life” Saparmurat Niyazov erected a 50-ft gold-plated statue of himself in the centre of the capital Ashgabat, eight years…
Faith, Hope And No Charity
The International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP) began with a bang: the National Federation of the Blind led its members in a vociferous agitation in…
Friend in Need
The Rashtriya Swyamsewak Sangh (RSS) is everybody’s favourite bugbear. So perhaps it was inevitable that it would be accused of having a hand in the…
Toilet – Training India
On September 25, the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi received the Gates Foundation’s Global Goalkeepers Award in New York for his leadership of the Swachh…
Killing me Softly
Death is inevitable, but not in a gas chamber He took a deep breath of air. Once again he caught a strangeness on the wind,…
APOCALYPSE NOW
Forget global warming and focus on local warnings Kanpur, Faridabad, Varanasi, Gaya, Patna, Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Muzaffarpur. Nine of the world’s ten most polluted cities…
Suffer The Children
Mere laws do not guarantee our youngest citizens a safe and healthy life The other day, I watched this video of four-year-old Jackson Drew reciting…
The Air is Thick
On Earth Day, let’s look at what our politicians promise on air pollution The Good news is that both the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress…