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The article discusses the potential economic and public health impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on India. Topics explored include the travel restrictions imposed by the Indian central and state governments to prevent further COVID-19 transmission, the public health budget allotted by the Indian government compared to other countries, and the lack of hospitals and physicians in the country that could help ease the health consequences of the pandemic.

The article profiles the village of Shahabpur, a settlement in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. A focus of the article is on Sarju Prasad, a poor member of the dalit, or untouchable, caste. A number of topics are addressed including the poor relations between Muslims and Hindus, condemnation of village life by B.R. Ambedkar, a founding father of India, and the poor agricultural yields.

The article discusses Indian family life as of December 2013 with a focus on relations between Indian wives and their mothers-in-law. The article notes the fearsome reputation of Indian "saas" or mothers-in-law who try to stop a son from bonding with his wife and the tradition of a bride moving in with the groom's family as well as the skewed power relations between the sexes and between generations in India. Topics include women's low status and author Veena Venugopal's remarks about saas.

The article reports on series of crimes and cases of miscarried justice in India in 2018. Topics discussed include the kidnap, gang rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl from a community of nomadic herders, the case of a politician in Uttar Pradesh who allegedly raped a 17-year-old girl, and imprisonment of religious leader Asaram Bapu for the rape of a 16-year-old girl.

The article discusses how distorted sex ratios at birth several years ago are impacting marriage and the societies in India and China as of 2015, and it mentions informal local councils known as khaps. According to the article, the Satrol knap in Haryana, India relaxed its ban on inter-caste marriage in April 2014 due to a declining make-female sex ratio. Indian customs, sex-selective abortions in China, and declines in the populations of girls and women in China are also examined.

The article looks at the public welfare system in India. Particular attention is given to a test program started in 2011 in which cash transfers replaced public distribution of rations for poor families, noting that a monthly stipend given to families helped increase families' nutrition. Other topics covered include corruption prevention measures, the policies of India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and food distribution.

The article examines child malnutrition in India. The country has one of the world's highest rates of underdeveloped and malnourished children despite significant overall economic growth. The country's program for early childhood development and assistance is considered. It is noted that this program places little emphasis on children under two years of age and pregnant women, where feeding practices create the highest risk of future underdevelopment and malnourishment.

The article examines medical economics and the health care system in India. The country's poverty and relative lack of government-funded medical care has led physicians and hospitals to focus on serving the largest number of persons at the lowest possible cost, with less spending on upgrades of technology such as imaging systems, but more spending on cost control efficiencies such as computerized medical records.

The article assesses the degree of terrorist activity in India in the wake of the November 2008 terrorist attack in the city of Mumbai. The author notes that the event was uncharacteristic in that it targeted foreigners and the wealthy, while the majority of India's significant number of terrorist acts have been borne the less affluent. Examined are terrorist activities conducted by religious and political groups throughout the country.

The article discusses the coordinated terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. Details about the attacks, which targeted foreigners and may have been the responsibility of the Deccan Mujahideen organization, are provided. The history of Islamist militancy in India and the place of Islam in Indian politics and society are also explored.

The article reports on moves in India to crack down on the number of medical impostors, or "quacks," dispensing medicine and medical advice without a license. Legitimate private health care is available for the middle and upper classes, but it states that the public health system serving the masses of poor is in shambles.

The author offers opinions on a proposal by the Indian government to require that nation's businesses to hire more workers from Hinduism's lower castes. The idea is condemned as a potential disaster. The caste system is criticized, and affirmative action seen as a natural reaction to it. The author notes, however, that policies requiring the hiring of lower caste workers in the public sector have not succeeded in improving the economic situation of lower caste members.

The article focuses on research estimates concerning HIV infection in India. It is reported that initial population reports overstated the epidemic's progress, but the author maintains that the problem is still very prevalent. The government programs in place to combat the disease are described, highlighting the work of the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO).

The article discusses how the market for luxury-goods firms is growing in India. The article reports that several major luxury brands are planning to launch stores in India, including Dolce & Gabbana, Hermès, Jimmy Choo and Gucci. The article explains that because of high import duties many of the luxury goods being offered are extremely expensive. According to the article India's growing middle class is being attributed to the increase in the luxury-good market.

The article looks at how problems with India's electricity grid may affect its economic growth. An electricity shortage may thwart India's rush to modernity. Its organisers are calling it a victory for people power. They even invoke the name of Mahatma Gandhi, icon of India's independence struggle. For economic reformers, however, it is a depressing defeat: by making a huge fuss and refusing to pay their bills in full, Delhi's middle class last month persuaded the local government to withdraw an increase--of about 10%--in the residential electricity tariff. The protesters alleged they were being robbed by rigged meters and forced to pay exorbitant first-world prices for an unimproved, erratic third-world service. They had a point. But if not even well-off citizens in the capital will pay an economic rate for their power, what hope is there for the rest of the country, where politicians habitually offer free power to farmers in the hope of winning their votes? And while electricity boards continue to rack up huge losses, what chance is there of finding the money so desperately needed for investment in new generating equipment? More fundamentally, where will the fuel come from? Power cuts are a way of life in India, at least in parts of the country lucky enough to regard them as an interruption rather than the norm. There is a worsening shortage. Over the past decade, electricity generation has grown at a compound annual rate of 5.5%, but demand has grown even faster. Yet India wants electricity to reach every village by 2008--demanding the electrification of 110,000 villages--and every household by 2012. Indian industry, long used to the failings of the national grid, has survived by building its own "captive" generating plants. The government claims electricity was on its way to being "self-sustaining". This picture of healthy progress, however, does not match popular perceptions.

Comments on economic policies advocated for India by Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize-winning economist. Problems of Indians being underfed, undereducated and having health problems; Percentage of illiterate people in South Asia; Percentage of India's gross domestic product required to enroll its children in primary school.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to a letter discussing the 2002 Indian pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat, India, published in the January 4, 2014 issue.

The article focuses on the Pardhi tribe, an ethnic group in India. The majority of Pardhis are extremely poor, and are often victims of discrimination due to an historic reputation for criminal behavior. Efforts by India's government to improve economic conditions among its tribal peoples are discussed.

The article discusses the political state of India and examines the results of the 2009 Indian general election. The success of the Congress party is described and the social challenges facing the Indian government are explored. Details are also provided about the political goals of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The article discusses how Hindu extremists in India's "tribal belt" have increased their strong anti-Christan campaign. It is reported that an expansionist evangelist movement is growing in India's tribal belt, and it is targeting tribal people, Hindus, and Christians, many of whom have switched churches to join independent Pentecostal groups. The article explains that the trouble between Christians and Hindus in the tribal belt has more to do with politics than theology.

The article discusses how India's army is short of 11,000 officers. The article explains that the shortage is most acute in the lower ranks, and the Indian Military Academy in Dehradum, a school for officer cadets, can currently fill only 86 of the 250 places. India's military officers are attributing the soldier shortage to the country's booming economy

The article discusses sex education in India. Many Indian states, including Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh have rejected a sex education program from the central government. In a country where sex is rarely openly discussed, many teachers objected to teaching about sex. There has been protest from religious groups, and objection to teaching about AIDS and contraception. In India, 44 percent of reported AIDS cases involve people 15-29 years of age.

The article focuses on the proposed efforts by the government of India to clean-up the streets of Delhi in preparation for the Commonwealth Games to be hosted in 2010. The controversial opposition met by plans to rally and remove street food vendors and cows is contrasted with the lack of resistance to the similar treatment of beggars.

The article looks at how family members of Indian royalty are hunting illegally. It has been thirty-five years since India's royalty--an array of some 300 princes, maharajahs and nawabs--lost their privy purses and privileges. But their families are often still treated as local rulers, and many indulge with impunity in their traditional sport of hunting, illegal since 1972. However, Mansur Ali Khan, the Nawab of Pataudi, known as "Tiger" since he killed a creature of that species, spent last weekend in a police cell near his ancestral home, charged with killing a female black buck--an antelope that is one of India's most protected species.

he article discusses the impact of population on the economies of China and India. THE numbers, as ever, are disputed; but it seems beyond doubt that China is ageing faster than any other country in history. It is unique in growing old before it has grown rich. In the coming decades China will have to cope with caring for an ageing population. And in the mid-2020s, on official projections, the working-age population will start shrinking. India, with an average age of 26, is a younger country than China (33), and has started to look on its growing population as a potential asset. A 2003 report by Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, on the four big emerging economies--Brazil, Russia, India and China--suggested that, alone among them, India's economy would continue to grow at more than 5% a year until 2050. In other Asian countries, the bulge in the working-age population that India is now experiencing brought rapid economic growth.The other consequence of smaller families has been a sex ratio strongly skewed in favour of boys. Nobody knows what effect this preponderance of boys will have on Chinese and Indian society in the future.

The article reports that Mumbai's Slum Rehabilitation Authority plans to begin drawing up a list of developers who will bid to transform Dharavi, one of Asia's largest slums, into a multibillion-dollar showpiece over seven years. In Dharavi and Mumbai's other sprawling slums is a thriving entrepreneurial spirit that has spawned small businesses ranging from pottery to leather goods, and that is also now beginning to support formal property development. Some of these businesses are owned and operated by members of a single family. In others, workers are employed by an upwardly-mobile owner who lives elsewhere. Local residents and non-governmental organisations are sceptical about the motives for developing Dharavi. Dharavi is on a prime location adjacent to a big nature park and a mile or so from the city's new Bandra-Kurla business district, as well as being near the airport.

Presents a letter to the editor in response to the article "Could AIDS explode in India?" which appeared in the April 17, 2004 issue and focused on the increase in the number of AIDS cases in India and the public's lack of education about the disease.

In India, some politicians are using that country's Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) to lock up their political opponents as terrorists. A landmine attack on October 1st, 2003, on the convoy of Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh, was a reminder of the variety of terrorist threats facing India. Mr. Naidu was lucky to survive the assassination attempt, presumed to be by the People's War Group, a Maoist faction that has issued his "death warrant." Such groups, combined with long-running insurgencies in Kashmir and the north-east and newer extremist Islamist outfits, are used to justify the draconian provisions of India's POTA, passed into law in 2002. Jayaram Jayalalitha has demanded the sacking of M. Kannappan, India's minister for non-conventional energy sources. She has threatened to use POTA to arrest Mr. Kannappan, who is a member of a party in opposition in Tamil Nadu, but part of the ruling national coalition. Some lawyers claim POTA is unconstitutional because it infringes the rights of free speech and association and permits arbitrary detention. In Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, the former government led by Miss Mayawati used it to detain a number of its opponents, including Raja Bhaiya, a well-known local warlord. Miss Mayawati's government fell in August. Its successor quickly ordered his release. Civil-rights lawyers recall the abuses of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, which lapsed in 1995 after nearly 80,000 people had been detained nationwide, but only 1% of them convicted. POTA expires next October, but is likely to be extended.

Rainwater harvesting seems as obvious as putting a barrel in your back yard. In the more arid regions of India, however, it involves bigger projects than mere barrels, stretching to quite significant dams, underground tanks and reservoirs, often of great antiquity. That is why there is such interest in the revival of rainwater harvesting in Rajasthan, led by the charismatic Rajendra Singh, known as the water man. Mr Singh's organization, Tarun Bharat Sangh, based in a tiny remote village near Alwar, has attracted visits and support from the World Bank, the United Nations and USAID, America's development agency. Mr Singh is opposed to most of the Indian government's ideas for solving the country's water problems, including dams, the "very dangerous" project for interlinking of rivers, and privatization. It would be fanciful to suggest that rainwater harvesting can resolve all water problems. It is harder in big cities, and if too much is collected not enough water may reach rivers or replenish groundwater supplies. But it has a role to play. Perhaps above all, it offers a useful lesson in the benefits of treating water as a local issue, best dealt with by local communities.

Discusses the controversial practice in India of a bus picking up poor people and putting them in jail, as part of the 1959 Bombay Prevention of Begging Act. Criticism that the act criminalizes poor people; Question over where bail money paid by the poor people actually goes; Small percentage of convictions of the people who are picked up.

Offers observations on the caste system in India as of June 2001. Efforts of Dalit activists, members of the caste which used to be known as Untouchables, to qualify caste discrimination as racism; How Dalits are discriminated against; Reluctance of India to be examined by the United Nations for discrimination.

Discusses the state of elections in India, as of September 11, 1999. How the voter turnout rate seemed quite low; Statistics on the number of voters; Reasons for the low turnout rate; Role played by India's conflict with Pakistan.