During my weekly conversation with my sister I told her about the unusual searing heat this June, the problems of power cuts and how we are coping in India. She, in turn, told me that in Washington DC, where she lives, there was a terrible storm that damaged her roof and uprooted trees in her…
Helicopters of the Indian Air Force (IAF) today rescued all the 12 persons on board the boat clinic stranded in the Dibang river here. The Dibang is one of the main channels of the Brahmaputra in eastern Assam. The motorboat had been immobilised after it hit the river’s bottom that had swelled up due to…
A few months ago, Purno Sangma, now the main Opposition candidate for the Presidential election, had come to a meeting that I had organized at Jamia Millia Islamia. It was the Annual Saifuddin Kitchelew Lecture and since I hold the Kitchelew Chair, I had invited him to preside over the session. The main speaker was…
Thirteen-year-old Salman’s day starts at 6 am when he sets off from his home at Shahbad Daulatpur to Rohini Sector 18. Once there, he begins his work: scrounging through garbage. Salman is a wastepicker, one of the three lakh wastepickers in the Capital. One day, Salman hopes to go to school. He has many such…
On April 27, 1998, a 60-year-old Tibetan doused himself with petrol, set himself alight, ran out onto a busy street in a crowded city, enveloped in flames, after. Thubten Ngodup’s last words, \shouted even as he was burning like a torch, were ‘Po Gyalo!’ (Victory for Tibet!) ‘Po Rangzen!’ (Free Tibet!). His act of self-immolation…
Geneva, Switzerland -- Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Myanmar pro-democracy leader, will participate in the tenth annual high-level retreat of mediators and peace process actors, known as the Oslo forum, which will take place on 18-19 June 2012 in Oslo, Norway. The overall theme for this years forum will be…
P. SAINATH of "The Hindu" is a journalist I respect. He is one of the few journalists who visit the countryside and file stories which are earthy and full of passion. His reports on paid news exposed a practice in Maharashtra and elsewhere where newspapers accept money to print news favourable to the one who…
Two sets of tragedies dominate headlines, both in our region and in other parts of India. And both are related, unfortunately, to the North-east. The first relate to the tragic deaths in quick succession of a young student from Meghalaya in the Delhi region at a private university and of an architecture student in Bangalore…
The state of Assam in northeast India has the highest maternal mortality rate (MMR) in the country. One of the reasons for the abysmal record is that over three million people live on tiny islands along the Brahmaputra River without proper health infrastructure. Boat clinics on the river, an initiative of the Centre for North…
Swedish midwife, Christina Pedersen collaborating with Ipas- an organization headquartered in North Carolina, US and working around the world to increase women's ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights, especially the right to safe abortion visited the Tinsukia and Dibrugarh Boat Clinic Units in April 2012. Her report follows with photographs of the camps…