She may never have won an Olympic medal, but the Indian athlete I admire most still is P T Usha --not only because she set the tracks ablaze all over the world in the 1980s (Usha missed a bronze at the Los Angeles Games by a whisker in the 400 m hurdles), but also because of the impact she has had on Indian life.

The sex ratio in India is about 927 girls to every 1000 boys. In many states, like Haryana and Punjab, young men have to spread their nets very wide to look for wives. This situation is similar to the one faced by China when its one child policy led to many female babies being aborted.

Reporting is no longer limited to writers and broadcasters with years of professional journalism experience. Ordinary citizens, or citizen journalists, can report on events as they see them so that we can read about them as they happen. They shoot pictures of events they deem newsworthy and share them with their friends, who share them with their friends—and the cycle goes on.

While we drown in the noise of debates over what...

In the face of lackluster public education, even poor families turn to private education. By scrimping and saving, many can afford “cheap” private school—and this is often the only way to obtain a quality education. In fact, private schools flourish in rural or low-income areas. The World Absenteeism Survey found that they were more likely found in villages in India where the public system was lacking.

One of the problems for the Amazonas school system is finding qualified high school teachers in those small towns. Another is that pupils often have to travel great distances to get to class. Some are forced to come to Manaus if they want a high school education; others give up, defeated by the hassle or the cost.

The energy crisis in this country is an urgent and growing concern. Our oil imports have doubled in the last decade; we now import around 80% of our crude oil requirements. Roughly 70% of the energy generated in India is through coal – an undependable resource now in shortage.