Thirteen-year-old Sanjay Chhetri has a recurring fear: that one day, the dark, dank mine where he works will cave in and bury him alive. Like thousands of children in India’s remote northeast, Chhetri begins work in the middle of the night, ready to dig pits, squat through narrow tunnels and cut coal shards. At four feet six inches, the skinny teenager is the perfect fit for a job in the […]
ponsored by: Dalit Freedom Network USA Every day, 1.3 million people in India (of which 97% are Dalit women and children) are forced to clean human excrement with their bare hands in a practice known as manual scavenging. On June 17, 2011, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, in a moment of historical precedent, called manual scavenging “one of the darkest blots on [India’s] development process” and asked all State […]
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On New Year’s day, India joined a select band of countries where food containing genetically modified (GM) content must be labelled as such. But it has done so without any preparation. The labelling of foods with GM ingredients has been a long-held demand of consumer groups, but the way it has been done in India has left them disappointed. The Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011, which came into effect […]
In a move criticized by many, Facebook removed a photo of a breast cancer survivor’s large chest tattoo, citing a violation of its strict nudity policy, UPI reports. However, the social networking site has since backtracked on its decision, allowing the photo to stay on the Custom Tattoo Design’s Facebook page. In an email to The Huffington Post, Fred Wolens of Facebook Policy Communications explained the move, writing “Mastectomy photos […]
Linda Stewart used a Kelowna-based company www.Meditours.org to arrange a medical tourism trip in May 2010 to get an experimental treatment for MS in India. Stewart is one of the unknown number of Canadians using medical tourism to access experimental treatments not offered in Canada. Shaz Pendharkar, of Kelowna, B.C., is the first to admit he isn’t a trained medical professional. He is a retired school principal who connects patients to […]
At least 12 people were killed and 78 wounded when bombs ripped through crowded areas in Hyderabad on Thursday in what the prime minister called a “dastardly act”. The bombs targeted the crowded place in a suburb of the city, a hub of India’s information-technology industry which has a large Muslim population, and came with the nation on alert after the recent hanging of Afzal Guru. A senior police officer at […]
“The voice of the common man must rise,” said this soft spoken revolutionary, on his 91st year, after a quarter century of coaxing that voice out with the promise that he would ensure it got heard. H.D. Shourie, civil servant for 35 years and an agent of civil action for over 25, died on 28th June 2005, having lived a life that straddled many borders. The most obvious boundary perhaps […]
