The 1200-MW Teesta III hydroelectric project has already seen years of missed deadlines and huge cost overruns, but more serious threats loom ahead as the promoter fights its own internal battles. Soumik Dutta has more on the various problems plaguing the project.

An India Together interview with Nirmalatai Purandare, of the Vanasthali Rural Development Centre.

From being deprived of the most basic liberties, Anita Dhangda has travelled many miles, and the lessons of that passage make her determined to succeed in her new role.

Rasika Dhavse profiles the Disability Network

Kalpana Sharma on accepting and welcoming differences.

Geeta Seshu reports on a recent study that recently looked at decreasing funding for women specific schemes.

A multimedia curriculum developed by a Mumbai non-profit aims to have students critically explore the relationships between women, beauty and advertising. Geeta Seshu reports.

The recent national consultation at Mumbai on the right to healthcare included the National Human Rights Commission. The pursuit of "Health for all" is very much alive, says Abhay Shukla.

A decade ago, Latur was devastated by an earthquake, but the women have emerged stronger from the disaster, says Meena Menon.

Rasika Dhavse profiles Arvind Gupta, winner of the National Award for Science Popularisation.

Cautiously, but with conviction, some farmers are switching to organic farming, and bidding goodbye to the pesticide-driven harvests of the Green Revolution. Ramesh Menon reports.

In recent times, Ganesh Utsav festivities in Pune have adapted to environmental concerns, says Rasika Dhavse.

The government machinery has a number of explanations for the deaths of numerous tribal children in Maharashtra's Melghat region. But the adivasis themselves do not identify any of these as the cause of their deaths. Instead they point to the systematic destruction of their traditional livelihood in the name of law and development. Aparna Pallavi reports.

Offer to build 320,000 houses for slum-dwellers. Deliver only 1146. In two years, only a tiny fraction of the number of houses a Maharashtra government plan called for actually got built. Dilip D'Souza dissects an infamous cross-subsidy fiasco that was born as an election promise.

Many teenagers in Mumbai are spending their evenings on the "untiring toil" of tuitions, trying to learn what their teachers should have been teaching them in junior college but don't. This is a system that unthinkingly takes away these kids' leisure time, says Dilip D'Souza.

Much debate over the massive dam projects on the Narmada has been on costs vs benefits as well as poor rehabilitation measures. But one of the original questions activists raised years ago was over the Right to Information. The 'RTI' factor may be finally hitting home, reports Jaideep Hardikar.

Municipalities are outsourcing city waste collection to private contractors. As a result, rag-pickers face a loss of their livelihood, unless the informal sector itself is institutionalised within the hierarchy of solid waste management. Surekha Sule reports.

The “simple man” silently walked out of his hut that fateful day, went to the backyard and consumed pesticide in the veil of darkness. Rising family debt had forced his children out of school, and that proved the last straw. Jaideep Hardikar recounts the stories of this and two other farmer suicides.

Not least because affordable rental housing in Bombay is an urban myth, the jobs we invite our fellow Indians to fill so that we can have all those good things of a booming economy, are filled by people who have little choice but to live in slums. And then we raze those slum homes. Cavalier, says Dilip D'Souza.

In Maharashtra, the Golden Jubilee Urban Employment Scheme can point to many successes for families below the poverty line. Surekha Sule reports on the social, economic, and psychological upliftment created by unusually diligent administration of a government program.

In Yavatmal district alone, there's been an eight-fold increase in farmers' suicides in just four years. Yet, thanks to a flawed counting process, even that is a huge under-estimate. P Sainath continues his series on the agrarian crisis in Vidharbha.

With the rains finally here, spurious seeds and other fake inputs introduce a deadly new element in the survival struggle of the Vidharbha farmer. Fake seeds from Andhra Pradesh have come in on a large scale. P Sainath continues his series on Vidharbha's crisis.

What does it say about our priorities when a rescue team trying to get help to victims of a landslide has to destroy other homes to reach them? Citizens might be resilient during natural disasters, but this isn't spirit; to find that we have to look elsewhere, and at other times, says Dilip D'Souza.

In the three days the National Commission on Farmers team toured Vidharbha, there were six suicides. In Panderkauda, the body of the latest farmer to take his life entered that town's hospital the same day the team arrived there for a meeting on farmer distress. P Sainath continues his series on Vidharbha's crisis.

"This building is dangerous. It may collapse at any time. Enter at your own risk." So goes a warning sign at the entrance to a building in Mumbai. Buildings that crumble are an old tradition in this city, with at least one cause being the Rent Control Act. Dilip D'Souza says the pernicious law must go.

Chandrakant Pathak has invented power-generation gadgets tailored especially for rural energy needs. As Pathak's gadgets are gaining popularity in rural areas of Pune district and several neighbouring districts in Maharashtra, state energy development agencies are taking note, reports Aparna Pallavi.

With the decision to turn an important commercial road in the city into a walking plaza on weekends, Pune is reaping a healthier urban environment as well as a popular public space. Vinita Deshmukh reports that the early opposition from some quarters has given way, as more people take to the street.

In London, Singapore and Shanghai, high one-time car taxes and congestion fees have been used to regulate traffic load. In Mumbai though, despite the congestion and pollution caused by private motorised transport, road taxes and parking fees remain very low. Darryl D'Monte reports.

When the Maharashtra state government started punishing moneylenders in response to rising farmer suicides in Vidarbha, hundreds of cotton farmers complained. "Who will give us credit now?" they asked. Third in his series, Jaideep Hardikar records the deep-rooted factors for the dominance of the moneylender in Vidarbha.

At the core of the agriculture crisis in Vidarbha are the disparities between the western and eastern regions that the state's policies have fostered over five decades. Starved of the funds that western region has for long received, it now hardly matters whether Vidarbha gains the status of statehood, notes Jaideep Hardikar.

Incessant rainfall in the catchment area of the Sardar Sarovar dam, coupled with less water being allowed to flow into the Narmada main canal led to an unusual overflow in early August, despite upstream dams not recording downstream releases. Himanshu Upadhyaya reports on the devastation in the Narmada valley.

With government health machinery not being of help, distress-ridden peasantry in Vidarbha unable afford private health care are now falling victim to the Chikungunya viral fever. This is bad news for agriculture, with crops already devastated by floods and heavy rains recently, reports Jaideep Hardikar.

In India, paid sex fuels the spread of HIV, its skewed power equation making it impossible for women to negotiate their own safety. Women in sex work in Mumbai now have an additional means to protect themselves – the female condom. Sumita Thapar and Akhila Sivadas report.

Both the Maharashtra Chief Minister's and the Prime Minister's relief packages for Vidarbha included for distribution of thousands of cows to the region's beleagured farmers. Jaideep Hardikar finds out that the measure has hurt, not helped.

Technology majors are keen to establish direct contact with potential customers in rural areas, and setting up computer kiosks is an important step in this direction. These first steps are hardly catalytic, but that has not deterred the companies, which are thinking of markets far into the future. Gagandeep Kaur reports.

The idea of world class highways in India, runway smooth, takes some getting used to. There is the Golden Quadrilateral from Delhi to Mumbai, and then there are the 70 kms of rubble between Disa in Gujarat and Sanchor in Rajasthan. Dilip D'Souza drives into the New Year weekend.

After the police firing incident at Wani in Vidarbha last month, the Maharashtra government's cotton procurement at the minimum support price rose to 20,000 quintals in four days at one centre alone. But in weeks, it's back to the old ways, making distressed farmers wait at market yards for days, writes Jaideep Hardikar.

Hundreds of women in Maharashtra's Gondia district travel from small towns to the villages to earn a daily wage. Unlike most migrants, they are footloose workers from an urban setting seeking work in the villages. At stations along the way are labour contractors, waiting to pick up workers on the cheap. P Sainath reports.

More and more land in Vidarbha has come under women's cultivation, but pressures of culture and family economics are still strongly against their title to land itself. But increasingly, women are coming out to assert their rights, reports Aparna Pallavi.

In Vidarbha, where an average one cotton farmer ends his life every six hours, Mangalabai and Kamalabai are mothers who singularly stand out. After the death of their husbands, they learned every thing and are raising their family with unnoticed resilience, reports Jaideep Hardikar.

Prakash Kardaley's personal integrity and unflinching courage to uncover the wrongs in society were an inspiration to his colleagues. Equally, the RTI law for him was a weapon; he insisted that ordinary citizens were the warriors who had to wield it. Rasika Dhavse pays tribute to the senior journalist who passed away on 15 July.

In Vidarbha, widowed women farmers have been hit hard by lack of viable farm credit. Quite a lot of women find themselves unable to carry out farm work in the absence of credit. Caught between fear and despair, their options are limited. Aparna Pallavi reports.

Vidarbha farmers are shifting to soybean and oilseeds as substitute, harangued by dipping cotton prices, highly volatile markets and withdrawal of government support. Jaideep Hardikar reports on the trend, the risks and the other alternatives for the farmers.

In India's business capital, the NGO Sanmitra is helping HIV positive women re-enter the mainstream workforce, thereby ensuring them a life of independence and dignity. Sumita Thapar has more.

Shreekrishna Kalamb's life and musings as a poet-farmer symbolise the agrarian crisis that is wrecking havoc in the Vidarbha countryside. Kalamb ended his life last month, and his grieving daughter now hopes to publish the collection. Jaideep Hardikar reports.

Fertilizer shortages have sparked unrest across large swathes of rural Maharashtra and other States as well. In Washim, every constable and officer is deployed right within the police compound, distributing fertilizer. P Sainath reports.

Up against a political shylock and wiping his tears and looking skywards for some divine intervention, Tukaram Kandalkar, farmer in Amaravati, Vidarbha, tells his lawyer with folded hands: “Do anything, but save me from losing my land.” Jaideep Hardikar reports.

In a city that lives on the edge, the taxi drivers see and hear a lot. They could provide any news channel its biggest scoop ever, but they are also smart enough to value their lives and keep their mouths tightly shut. More street voices from Rajendar Menen's book.

Maharashtra's RTI activists recently attended and recorded hearings at the state's Information Commission and identified why pendency of disposals is building up: Information Commissioners were not hearing cases for not more than two hours per day. Shailesh Gandhi has more.

Shivangaon, a village near Nagpur produces a staggering Rs.25-29 crores worth of milk each year. Government-led land acquisition here for a new cargo hub is hurting the local economy, reports Jaideep Hardikar.