By Melanie P Kumar

When minorities have no place in a state sworn to secularism, when freedom of speech and expression is curtailed, what vibrant Gujarat are we talking about, asks Father Cedric Prakash, human rights activist from Ahmedabad

By Manjira Majumdar

Classical dancer Alokananda Roy’s dance project for prisoners serving life sentences in West Bengal’s correctional institutions helps build self-esteem and gives the prisoners hope and purpose

Racial discrimination is increasing, and not only against Indian students in Australia. Dismissing racist attacks as hooliganism will not help, says Mukul Sharma. There is an urgent need to speak out frequently, strongly and at all levels of government against racism and xenophobia

By Nirmala Banerji

Jayati Ghosh’s new book on women’s work in globalising India reveals the Indian state’s patriarchal attitude towards women’s work

By Anosh Malekar

With the spotlight on lifestyle diseases like diabetes and hypertension, traditional illnesses like sickle cell disease, which affects tribals all across India, are not receiving the attention they deserve

By Sandhya Srinivasan

The swine flu pandemic is relatively mild in India so far, but in India and elsewhere what governments must do to prevent the occurrence of such outbreaks is strengthen public health systems, regulate corporate livestock farming, and ensure access to essential drugs and vaccines

By Anju Munshi

For 19 years, Kashmiri Pandits living in refugee camps in Jammu have seen no change in their poor living conditions. Riddled by disease, crammed into one-room tenements, and rendered unemployable by poor education and lack of employment opportunities, a whole generation has grown up angry, depressed and alienated

By Aseem Shrivastava

In China, jobs in modern industry declined by 20 million since 1990. But employment in light industries in the countryside increased by 30 million. Is it possible to think of a model of light industrialisation for India?

Compiled by Siddharth Narrain

The judgment in The Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting v Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) articulated the important principle that the broadcasting media should be under the control of the public as distinct from government

Another world is certainly possible, but is another World Social Forum, wonders Achal Prabhala, recalling the crucial debates at the plenaries between crypto-autonomists and anarcho-syndicalists or whatever, while the masses slept in the back rows and indigenous people sang and shouted “Down Down World Bank!” every time a camera crew passed by

By Rina Mukherji

Understanding Trafficking stresses the difference between women who migrate and join the sex trade and women who are trafficked into the sex trade

By Pradeep Baisakh

With the first genetically modified food poised to enter the Indian market, a timely documentary entitled Poison on the Platter shows how little the Indian public knows about what it is consuming

By Michelle Chawla

The declaration of Dahanu as an ecologically fragile zone in 1991 has had repercussions on the orchard economy too. Farmers, already troubled by declining yields and globalisation, cannot convert their orchards to non-agricultural use. They feel they are trapped into farming by an environmentalism that is out of context

By Jyoti Punwani

Stop visiting wildlife sanctuaries and start contesting elections, says Rishi Agarwal, environmental activist from Mumbai, who stood for elections in the recent polls – and won 3,000 votes

By Mari Marcel Thekaekara

Twelve dalit girls are baking bread and cakes at a Mysore café. Elsewhere in Mysore sex workers and transgenders are running their own restaurant. At La Boulangerie in Chennai, dalit youth are baking French delicacies and supplying them to 5-star hotels. These ‘tasty’ experiments are about breaking the vicious circle of oppression and making a political statement