JAGATSINGHPUR - Exhibiting rare love and affection, a cow has been feeding two baby goats in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur district for the past two months, the cow’s owner said Monday.

Winters leave Ladakh out of bound, make stocking of food material a must

LEH - Come winter and authorities in Ladakh district of Jammu and Kashmir have to ensure that there is ample procurement and stock of foodstuff and other essential commodities since the region will remain cut off from the rest of the mainland due to heavy snowfall on the approach links.

With art and grit, she helps women in Maoist badlands (Feature with images)

BUNDU - Deep in the heart of Maoist country in Jharkhand, a young woman is reviving ancient artistic genres to “bring new meaning into the lives of tribal and backward caste women” whose husbands and kin have taken to arms.

Yuan as new global currency? It can bode well for India (Comment)

The fact that World Bank President Robert Zoellick has said that China’s yuan may become the global reserve currency over the next 15 years assumes significance not just for the world but also for India. It has the potential to make Indian goods relatively more competitive as the Chinese currency today is highly controlled.

Are the Communists fast losing appeal in India? (Comment)

Revival of India’s merchandise exports on the horizon (Comment)

The outlook for India’s merchandise exports now looks set to improve over the next few months, giving rise to hopes that a positive growth will finally be recorded by January 2010. The exports data for September clearly shows that the rate of decline has dropped considerably, even as global demand has picked up.

Of virgin beaches and Indian history lessons (Letter from Andamans)

PORT BLAIR - Along with its crystal clear blue water, long white sand beaches, mangrove-lined creeks and diverse marine life, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands also provide the visitor with vital insights into Indian history.

Why fundamental scientific research has not caught on in India (Comment)

This can happen only in India! Even as the nation continues to celebrate the success of Chandrayaan, the country’s first space mission to moon, this is not something one of the seniormost scientists in India, Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao, is particularly thrilled about.

India’s Muslims lack an enlightened leadership (Comment)

Indian Muslims continue to suffer from the misfortune of being led by people with a limited vision whose initiatives appear to be aimed at fostering a ghetto mentality instead of encouraging the community to become a part of the mainstream.

India needs better fire protection services (Comment)

The massive oil depot fire that raged for days in Jaipur has dramatically but tragically illuminated the woefully inadequate fire service infrastructure in India. While conceding that the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) depot fire in Jaipur was colossal by any standard, the routine fire accidents that occur on a daily basis reveal the institutional flaws in the entire fire protection capacity at a national level.

The last of the Jarawas: Living on handouts (Letter from the Andamans)

PORT BLAIR - As we drove from this capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands towards the Mayabandar forest reserve, four Jarawa children blocked the road with bamboo poles and demanded “paan” (betel leaf) and “biscut” (biscuits) in broken Hindi. The tribe with its population now down to 260 is getting dangerously dependent on handouts.

China learns that 2009 is not 1962 (Comment)

The inscrutable Chinese are supposed to take every step after careful deliberation. Whether it is Mao Zedong’s smile for an Indian envoy to open a new chapter after the 1962 conflict or the summoning of the Indian ambassador in Beijing to the foreign office at 2 a.m. to express displeasure, the Mandarins are believed to be sticklers for sign language.

With farm output poor, India’s recovery projections premature (Comment)

A stark beauty that keeps calling you back (Postcard from Ladakh, with images)

LEH - Known as the “land of high passes”, Ladakh is a kaleidoscope of nature’s extremes — snow-capped peaks to sand dunes, sub-zero temperatures to scorching sun — all sprinkled with barren mountains in myriad shades of brown.

Battle against Maoists being undermined by intellectuals (Comment)

Lenin described as “useful idiots” those bleeding heart liberals who were soft on the Communists despite the latter’s avowed objective of launching a violent insurrection to overthrow the supposedly rotten bourgeois system.

Floods in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka lead to hike in onion prices

NASIK - The floods in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, described by officials as the worst in many decades, have led to an increase in the prices of onions across the country.

Bofors: the stain that won’t go away (Comment)

Twenty-two years after a Swedish radio station first suggested that the Bofors howitzer gun deal involved the payment of “kroners to cronies” in the Rajiv Gandhi government and the Congress party, the controversy is still an occasional “breaking news”. Yet, to those who have grown to adulthood after that 1987 broadcast, the scam is a curious leftover of the past.

Kashmir’s autumnal glory may be shortlived - thanks to urbanisation (Letter from Kashmir)

kashmir-trip-076 SRINAGAR - As the chinar leaves change colour from green to crimson to yellow, autumn, the season of plenty in Kashmir, is at its peak. The countryside is buzzing with activity as peasants harvest their paddy crop and fruit growers pick apples in their orchards.

Is the recession over for the Indian economy? (Comment)

Are the clouds of recession lifting over the Indian economy as they seem to be over the rest of the world? That is the big question everyone is asking today, whether they be economic analysts or policymakers in the central government and the financial institutions.

Why the China threat story sells in India (Comment)

It’s the season of China-bashing in India. In bad old socialist days, the ruling party in India was quick to conjure up the “foreign hand” to distract public attention from a host of domestic crises. Now, it’s the turn of market-driven media to manufacture “external threats” to spike their TRP ratings.

By-poll shocks for ruling parties, except in Gujarat (Comment)

Within four months of the Congress’s success in the parliamentary polls, the party has been rudely jolted in the latest round of assembly by-elections.

The cycle rickshaw in London - it’s a ‘pedicab’ mate! (Feature with images)

LONDON - For an outsider, it’s a strange and pleasant sight to see the pedicab - akin to the cycle rickshaw in India - weave its way across the London streetscape.

Uneven growth makes India uncompetitive globally (Comment)

Is India a good place to do business? The answer seems to be it is excellent in some areas and difficult in others. No wonder the Indian economy has risen in one global index of competitiveness and gone down in another on business climate.

Uttarakhand women earn a living out of forest produce

CHAMOLI - Women of Chamoli district in Uttarakhand are rolling out herbal incense sticks and coal under the guidance of the district’s forest department.

Delhi, a world class city? Not when it pours (Comment)

Waterlogged roads, uprooted trees, non-functional traffic signals, vehicle breakdowns, serpentine queues of vehicles and now a roofless airport! These happen with unfailing regularity - whenever a heavy downpour or thunderstorm hits India’s capital as it has thrice in the past month - and every time officialdom refuses to make amends.

In Bihar, gun toting farmers guard water sources

PATNA - Harendra Singh and his neighbour Prakash Mahto, both farmers in Bihar’s drought-hit Arwal district, stand guard with guns at a canal - the only source of precious water for their fields - on the outskirts of their village.

Jaswant episode demonstrates BJP’s lack of evolution (Comment)

It is tempting to describe Jaswant Singh’s unceremonious expulsion from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a glaring example of the culture of intolerance of independence of thought that runs through India’s political class. In reality, it is merely one political party’s inability to define itself.

Drought can be overcome, action must be swift (Comment)

The latest data on industrial output, which shows a 7.8 percent growth in June, brings with it a silver lining to the spectre of drought, which looms large over the country because of the scanty June-September monsoon, so critical to the country’s farm output.

Soviet holiday haven looks for new place in the sun

RIGA - The Amber Coast sanatorium, located in the Latvian seaside resort of Jurmala, features a dacha where Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev would greet his guests. A clock with a hammer-and-sickle pendulum ticks in the corner, just as it did during the Breznhev era; a portrait of Lenin stares down from the wall.

School comes in a little box in cyclone-hit Sunderbans

KULTALI - Radharani Sardar, a Class 4 student, can never forget that May evening when she saw cyclone Aila batter her home here in the Sunderban islands that contain the world’s largest mangrove forests.

Cow feeds baby goats in Orissa