Every year the Knight fellowships program at Stanford University awards eight international fellowships for journalism innovation. This year, one of the eight is your own newsmagazine’s co-founder.

Farming practices encouraged by existing forest policies have drastically reduced the sources of food for the Malabar Grey Hornbill, once abundant in the Palni Hills of Tamil Nadu. Madhu Ramnath explains what endangers the species and how they can be saved.  

It has been more than nine months since a political crisis has snowballed into a battle between the tribals and the non-tribals of Manipur creating sharp divisions. Ramesh Menon surveys the fragile situation.

"The main hurdle to the development of Jharkhand is political: the state’s resources are under the control of this criminal nexus, and people have no say." Jivesh Singh interviews Jean Dreze on Jharkhand's 10th anniversary.

In this small sleepy Orissa village with a population of barely 400 adivasis, where there is no electricity and harsh conditions prevail, there is something remarkable about the women. Their level of awareness, their attitude and their personality have undergone a dramatic change in the last few years. Pradeep Baisakh has more.

Once-young fighters from Sri Lanka are now mostly family men entrenched in Malkangiri town. The way the one-time, once-brash warriors have woven themselves into the community is touching, writes P Sainath.

The media is partisan and the government corrupt. In this environment, the committed reporter has no choice but to go out and investigate with a hidden camera. But such sting operations are not a substitute for investigative reporting; as a result even serious revelations are quickly forgotten, says Arun Sadhu.

The struggle to wrest back interpretations of Islam from the extremists could give security a boost, but more importantly, it could halt the marginalisation and ghettoisation of Muslims in India, writes Firdaus Ahmed.

With the news increasingly slanted towards the rich, public health takes a back-seat while the concerns of the few are overblown. SARS is the first of many signs in the media of this disparity, says P Sainath.

On the streets in Guwahati, there are thousands of children outside the reach of the normal schooling system. Many have run away from their homes, and most must work to make ends meet. Ratna Bharali Talukdar reports on the challenges of bringing them into the mainstream.

The recent nod to Telangana has led to unrest and violence anew in Assam, where several groups have been struggling for their respective states for decades. Ratna Bharali Talukdar looks at the current situation in the context of the long and checkered movements for statehood in the region.

Even as the state government refuses to accept the cause behind the recent 50 starvation deaths reported by the media, hunger stalks the people of Balangir and other KBK districts in Orissa portending more such tragedies, writes Pradeep Baisakh.

A number of families residing in the char areas of Assam have apparently staved off misfortune by taking up sugarcane cultivation, but it may require more than just that to stem the trend of migration and improve living conditions in the region. Ratna Bharali Talukdar reports.

Baby Halder's life is like that of millions of poor, exploited women. What is different, and astoundingly so, is that she has written a book about it - a story which saddens us with its matter-of-fact narrative of a life of tribulation, but also makes us rejoice vicariously in its extraordinary triumph, writes Neeta Deshpande.

The Kaoboys of R&AW, which records the role of India's external intelligence agency over three decades, is replete with material that should force a re-assessment of intelligence operations by policy-makers and political leaders, says K S Subramanian.

Jalyatra is a welcome addition to the literature on water systems in India, and one hopes that it once again brings attention to the traditional systems and the key principles behind them, writes Shripad Dharmadhikary.

The bi-monthly book review journal Biblio celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Its founder editors, Darryl D’Monte is one of its founder editors, were invited to the Chandigarh Literature Festival, which was held earlier this month. D’Monte talks about an interesting book discussion he chaired at the festival.

38 babies died in one hospital in Thiruvananthapuram over the past four months, shocking a state which boasts of the lowest infant mortality rate in the country. The much discussed and extolled Kerala model of health development is ailing, reports P N Venugopal.

Attention to international benchmarks, awareness of rights and proactive provision of basic facilities could make train journeys a less stressful experience for physically challenged passengers in the country, says Malini Shankar in the second part of her series.

Institutionalised delivery is encouraged as a means of reducing maternal/infant mortality, but the misbehaviour meted to pregnant women in government hospitals deters them from seeking such care. Ruhi Kandhari reports.

The Government of Karnataka's Working Group on Decentralization discusses transparency and accountability for rural self-governance in the state. The first in a series of articles adapted from the Working Group's 2002 report.

Bangalore Municipality's fourth quarter results round up and other updates from the city' Public Records of Operations and Finance (PROOF) campaign.

Shree Padre delves into the details of a unique, successful experiment of self-help farm journalism.

India Together interviews Srikanth Nadhamuni of Bangalore's eGovernments Foundation.

Subramaniam Vincent profiles eGovernments Foundation's partnership with Karnataka to create better property-tracking systems, and notes the early gains for the state.

Water table reports in Karnataka show that the future looks bleak. While rainwater harvesting (RWH) is looked upon as a viable solution and has become a buzzword, the state has only taken an incremental implementation path, with urban areas currently leading rural areas, reports Padmalatha Ravi.

A citizens forum at Bangalore has been spearheading interventions using the Karnataka Right to Information Act for the past year. The Katte members' focus has helped expose the law's weaknesses and make recommendations to better the recently passed Central Right to Information Bill. Kathyayini Chamaraj reports.

The proposed 1000 MW coal-fired power plant at Chamalapura, Mysore, to be located on agricultural land and within 30 kilometres of the Nagarhole and Bandipur national parks, evoked strong protests last year. Recent announcements indicate that the government is going slow. Nandini Chami has more.

The government school system is not a rationally driven and coherent apparatus of state policy. Instead, its everyday work is continuously and varyingly reshaped in the light of social, institutional, and policy related inflections, write A R Vasavi and Rahul Mukhopadhyay.

It's a classic headline: "Government-funded rainwater harvesting for public schools goes wrong, money wasted". However in one district, the tale is altogether different. Shree Padre records the positives and the lessons.

Karnataka's plan to harvest power from the Gundia river that runs through the Hassan and Dakshin Kannada districts has been criticised by environmentalists, farmers and the Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. Bhanu Sridharan investigates.

A long history of questionable practices in the mining industry catches up with its practitioners, landing the whole affair in the Supreme Court. Kanchi Kohli reports.

With two decades of continuous research and wise management, this ex-lecturer in Karnataka's Udupi district has made a barren hillock into a model of rain harvesting. Shrikrishna D reports.

For the last one year, Parameshwara Hegde Tumbemane hasn’t taken his banana crop to the market. He has instead used it to make sukeli, a delicious dried version and that is getting popular in the Uttara Kannada district, Karnataka. Shrikrishna D has more.

Even as Justice Santosh Hegde credibly exposed the Karnataka government for its many scams, senior state politicans and Bangalore's academics worry that nothing will eventually come of it. Sriram Vittalamurthy reports from an October meeting in the city.

Bangalore, once the poster-boy of new age India and its development, is now crumbling, having been sorely let down by the administration and politics of the state. As Karnataka heads for polls, Subramaniam Vincent, discusses the prospects and necessary preconditions for change with independent MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

Legal and procedural lapses as well as disregard of critical public submissions are tarnishing the EIA of the proposed Tadadi Port in Karnataka. Kanchi Kohli reports.

A citizen’s probe unearths a racket in which toxic burnt waste is sold to farmers in the garb of vermicompost; what’s more, the packaging indicates involvement of a composting firm under the government. Shree D N and Akshatha M report from Bengaluru.

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

Shahid Burney, a Pune-based editor-journalist recently used the Right to Information law to precipitate the transfer of a number of state police officers whose postings violated Election Commission norms. An India Together interview with Burney.

Suicides by consuming poison contribute to over two-thirds of the total autopsies performed at a sub-district hospital in interior Vidarbha, Maharashtra. "Pesticide could be bought from any Krishi Kendra. But for medicine, they've to walk miles before they could get it," says one health official. Jaideep Hardikar reports.

There is now a growing body of opinion against soft drinks in particular and fast food in general being marketed to children through the media and directly in schools. A number of private schools in Mumbai have already stopped sales of colas in their canteens. Darryl D'Monte has more.

After the serial blasts, Mumbai may soon be faced with men with metal detectors checking bags, train stations with sniffer dogs, more checks, and more suspicion. In such an atmosphere, it will be much easier to sow the seeds of dissension, difference, or division. A city united in tragedy could easily fall apart, hazards Kalpana Sharma.

Maharashtra's sugar cooperatives helped raise hundreds of thousands of farmers out of high-risk choices, and brought a measure of economic security to the sugar belt. But over the years, big farmers have hijacked the original premise of the cooperative movement, and the region's prosperous past is now fading. Gagandeep Kaur reports.

Farmers in Datodi village in Yavatmal, Maharashtra, turned to sugarcane when the Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, called on the debt-ridden cotton farmers of Vidarbha to shift to the sweet cane last year. They are now paying the price, reports Jaideep Hardikar.

A pilot privatisation effort in Mumbai's K East ward ignores the lessons from other such efforts, both in India and elsewhere. Worse still, proponents of privatisation show little regard for public particiaption, and reject other options at the outset. Shripad Dharmadhikary reports.

A audit of the Maharashtra government's post-flood disaster relief expenditure of the last two years has thrown up plenty of instances of misuse of funds. The audit has also gone into the causes of floods turning out to be disasters. Himanshu Upadhyaya has more.

The challenge of educating street and railway children is more than an education problem - it is a holistic problem of moulding and supporting their entire lives. Aparna Pallavi reports on the efforts of CNI-SSI in Nagpur.

For a miniscule community of East-Bengali origin living in in Maharashtra, it has been a long struggle for the right to learn in their mother tongue. The community has won some victories recently, and much more remains to be done. Aparna Pallavi reports.

Shattered by a complete failure of crop this year, and looming debt, the three-acre farmer in Yavatmal, Mahrashtra, followed what tens of other farmers have done in Vidarbha in the past. Jaideep Hardikar reports.