How does a country of over a billion people take on the challenge of providing a better life to its citizens?

When Dr Marc Stollreiter, a first-time German visitor to Kashmir, went on a shikara ride on the picturesque Dal lake recently, he was shocked by what he saw beneath its tranquil waters. "We found huge quantities of syringes and needles. We saw mounds of rotting garbage. We saw tourists throwing empty chips packets, plastic bags and the like from shikaras into the lake."

shakuntala, 60, of Chamarpura village in Moradabad district in Uttar Pradesh continues to carry her traditional occupation of manual scavenging. She has no other alternative. On March 18, 2007, the

The decision by Jammu and Kashmir's Leh district to declare the Changthang region a highaltitude wildlife sanctuary has put Ladakh's Changpa nomads in a fix. The nomads have, for long, been using