Soccer`s embattled world governing body must make human rights one of its primary goals, on a par with promoting the sport and making money, according to a set of recommendations by a top UN official released on Thursday. FIFA should be prepared to use its negotiating leverage to ensure that countries bidding for its World Cup championship protect the rights of people who toil to build stadiums, John Ruggie, the […]

With the mercury soaring across the country, the water storage availability at India’s 91 major reservoirs has dipped to 37.92 billion cubic metres, which is just 24% of total storage capacity of these reservoirs.  The central water commission in its latest bulletin noted that the storage status of these reservoirs as on April 7 was less than the corresponding period last year.  The reservoirs usually get their share of water […]

April 14, 2016, will mark the 125th anniversary of BR Ambedkar’s birth. All around us, we see a rush of opportunists seeking to grab a piece of Ambedkarian glory, with the BJP leading the pack. Prime minister Narendra Modi never misses a chance to sing his paeans, both as prime maker of India’s Constitution and as champion of Dalit emancipation. The reality is that too much is made of Ambedkar […]

It is very early in the morning and people in the small houses next to the hospital are awake. Patients who are undergoing treatment in the hospital and their families stay here. If you listen closely, you can hear a faint cry of a child. She has been crying since long. At times, she stops and you can hear her mother’s voice calling out her name “Sayani’ and asking her […]

A sea lion learned a thing or two about California traffic when it wandered onto a highway, bringing traffic to a standstill during morning rush hour. While causing quite a commotion, the rescue effort revealed that he could be ill. School Daze is a juvenile sea lion who can’t be tamed, apparently. Daze started causing trouble just before 10:00 am on April 4, when the Marin County California Highway Patrol […]

Swati Bhondia, founder and chief decorating officer of Bangalore-based social venture Om Shanti Trader supports 1,000 poor and underprivileged individuals to improve their livesThree years ago, Swati Bhondia was on her way to a Bangalore college to seek admission to BBM course. A ragamuffin girl accosted the teenager and asked for alms. not wish to give her alms; I wanted to help her. I took her along with me. This […]

This is a story that is bound to move you to tears. In January this year, a picture of Danish philanthropist Anja Ringgren Lovén offering water and biscuits to a highly malnourished child on the streets of Nigeria was widely shared on social media. Lovén had found the child, named Hope (two-year-old), in January and he was, as pictures confirm, was on the brink of starvation. The child had been […]

At the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit dinner hosted by US President Barack Obama on Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hit the nail on the head when he said that terrorism has become “globally networked but “we still act only nationally to counter this threat”. He added: “The reach and supply chains of terrorism are global; but genuine cooperation between nation states is not”. The PM’s statement came a day after […]

This 84-year-old man, a Padma Shri awardee, has transformed the lives of thousands of villagers in Jharkhand with his massive tree-planting and water conservation efforts. Little has changed in Simon Oraon’s daily routine in the last 60 years. At 84, he gets up at 4.30 in the morning, goes to the fields, diligently checks the saplings he has planted around the village, takes a round of the forest he has […]

The President of India gave away the Padma Awards at a special function on March 28. These awards which were announced on the eve of Republic day in January were finally handed over by the President at a glittering event. So you could ask what’s so special about these awards and why do we need to devote a chunk of the web space to discuss them. Well for the first […]