11-Year Hunger strike and Anna Hazare's gimmick

She arrived in an ambulance, thin and ghostly pale, a tube dangling from her nostril. Flanked by police officers, she was ushered into the judge’s chambers for a fortnightly ritual she has repeated hundreds of times. Was she ready to end her fast?

Irom Chanu Sharmila, a 39-year-old poet and activist, gave her usual reply: no. With that, she was taken back to the hospital room where she spends her days in isolation, force-fed a sludgy mix of nutrients though the tube in her nose. This routine has gone on, remarkably, for 11 years.

A recent 12-day fast by the social activist Anna Hazareparalyzed India’s political system, captured the nonstop attention of its hyperkinetic 24-hour cable news media and inspired hundreds of thousands of people across the country to rally in his crusade against corruption. 

In New York Times, Lydia Polgreen meets Irom Chanu Sharmila who has been on a hunger strike for the past 11 years and is force-fed through a tube more

In India, Hitching Hopes on a Subway

 The trains arrive with a whisper. The doors slide open and a puff of refrigerated air confronts the city’s summertime miasma. A bell dings, the doors close and the train whisks its passengers to the next stop.

This sequence of events might seem utterly ordinary on train platforms in Berlin or Bangkok, Stockholm or Singapore. But here in the sweaty heart of India’s northernmost megacity, the runaway success of the city’s almost complete subway system, known as the Metro, is a feat bordering on miraculous, and it offers new hope that India’s perpetually decrepit urban infrastructure can be dragged into the 21st century.

The Delhi Metro manages to defy just about every stereotype of urban India. It is scrupulously clean, impeccably maintained and almost unfailingly punctual. Its cars are the latest models, complete with air-conditioning and even power outlets to let commuters charge their mobile phones and laptops. Its signaling and other safety technology is first rate, and the system is among the best in the world, urban transport experts say. Despite cheap fares, less than 20 cents for the shortest ride and about 67 cents for the longest, the system manages to turn an operating profit.

The Delhi Metro is perhaps the most ambitious urban infrastructure project since India won its independence, and its progress has been closely watched in a country facing a looming urban disaster. Unlike China and other rapidly growing developing countries, India remains predominantly rural.

A study published last month by the McKinsey Global Institute estimated that by 2030, 590 million Indians would live in cities and 70 percent of India’s new jobs would be in cities. India needs $1.2 trillion in infrastructure to accommodate these new arrivals, the report concluded, including 4,600 miles of railways and subways, and real estate equivalent to the entire city of Chicago every year.

From Lydia Polgreen's report in The New York Times

To read the full report click here.

India’s Catholics Plan to Report Abuse Claims

India’s Roman Catholic bishops are planning to institute a policy of reporting all abuse allegations against priests to the police for criminal investigations, rather than just handling the cases internally, a church spokesman said.
The draft policy is a response to a rising tide of allegations worldwide that many priests who abused children were permitted to return to work with little sanction, said the Rev. Joseph Karakombil, spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.
It also follows a high-profile case in which an Indian priest has been accused of sexual abuse when he worked in the United States.

Father Jeyapaul had returned a year earlier to India, and after a canonical trial was permitted to return to work as a priest; he was assigned to an administrative position in the Diocese of Ootacamund and not allowed to work with children. He has declared his innocence and has said he is willing to return to the United States to face charges.
With the sexual abuse scandal growing worldwide, last month the Vatican spelled out its procedures for handling sexual abuse accusations. The guidelines said that church officials should always follow “civil laws concerning reporting of crimes” — a policy that the Vatican said was long assumed but that was never before spelled out in its policy documents.

From Lydia Polgreen's report in The New York Times

To read the full report click here.