NewsCloud.com India News

Advocacy Project - Wastepicker Children Face Discrimination

Wastepickers scour through open trash bins for recyclable paper, metals, glass and plastics, which they then sell. According to Chintan, they account for almost 1 percent of Delhi's population and handle about 20 percent of the city's waste. They earn, on average, one or two dollars a day.

Microsoft Told to Pay Tax on Licence Fee (in India, not Washington)

The company, which sells its software in India through a circuitous route involving several group companies, had maintained that its deal with the customers is a sale and no royalty payment is involved. It is this position that has now been rejected. What nailed the issue, however, was an expression in the end-user agreement that says "the product is licensed, not sold". Tax authorities cited this and said if the software is licensed, there has to be a royalty involved.

Indian police halt Tibetan march

Police in India have detained more than 100 Tibetan refugees who were trying to march to the Chinese border in protest against China hosting the Olympics.

India to spend $13 million to protect tigers

The Indian government plans to spend more than $13 million establishing a special ranger force to protect the country's endangered tigers, following pressure from international conservationists to save the wild cats.

West Bengal's Stalinist government mounts terror campaign to quash peasant unrest

Through a murderous campaign of terror, the Stalinist government of West Bengal, India s third most populous state, has reasserted control over Nandigram, an area 160 kilometers southwest of Kolkata (Calcutta) that has been convulsed by peasant protests for the past 10 months.

Gap launches inquiry into child labour claims

The high street clothing chain Gap has called an emergency meeting with suppliers to investigate new allegations of forced child labour being used in the manufacture of their clothes.

India: Art student targeted by Hindu right and Gujarat authorities

All those who care for and defend artistic freedom and basic democratic rights should condemn the attack that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindu supremacist allies have mounted, with the support of the Gujarat authorities, against Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) fine arts student Chandramohan Srilamantula and the acting dean of the MSU s fine arts faculty, Shivaji Panikkar.

Coca-Cola agrees to buy vitamin water maker Glaceau for $4.1 B

I stopped buying Odwalla after Coke bought it. Now I'll stop buying Vitamin Water. It's because of Coke's abusive practices in India.

India's caste system turned on its head

A PARTY of "untouchables" took power in India's most populous state yesterday, the first time a political group championing Hinduism's lowest caste has headed a majority government in the country. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won 206 seats in the 403-seat assembly in Uttar Pradesh, a northern state home to 170 million people - more than the populations of Russia and Australia combined. The BSP, which has fought for the rights of India's Dalits - formerly untouchables in Hinduism's stratif

Ah, The Power Of Bollywood

Mysore, India, April 30, 2007 --- My three-year-old daughter has three dolls and each of these babies has a different Daddy. Their names are ShahRukh Khan, Salman Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, and they re no ordinary men: Each one is, in his own right, a mega star of the Indian screen, a sort of God in a country that s, for good or for bad, completely and utterly Bollywood-obsessed.

Solar loans light up rural India

Since the project began in 2003, there has been a 13-fold increase in the number of the solar power units being financed within the scheme's pilot area in southern India. A system capable of powering two to four small appliances, or lights, costs about $300-$500.

India To Offer Free Broadband by 2009

Quoting from the article: 'The government proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009, through the state-owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL. While consumers would cheer, the move holds the potential to kill the telecom business as we know it.'

India: Five years after 2002 Gujarat pogrom: the perpetrators go unpunished

Despite the passage of more than five years since the February-March 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in the Indian state of Gujarat, not a single one of the principal perpetrators of this horrific crime has been punished. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Muslims who were driven from their towns and villages by roving bands of Hindu supremacist thugs still languish in relief camps without electricity or running water.

Talks begin on Kashmir glacier

I think Musharraf is serious about bringing peace with India in his lifetime. The two-day talks centred on the disclosure of Pakistani positions on the 20,700ft glacier, which India says it requires before demilitarisation of the world's highest battlefield can begin.

Starbucks is starstruck

Starbucks is trying to stop an entrepreneur from opening a rival chain called Starstruck in India, effectively beating the coffee company to the punch. The entrepreneur says her concept is totally different from the Starbucks offer. The name is just coincidental, of course.