Special Report: Indian Doctors Are Shamelessly Lying On Women To Perform Unwarranted Hysterectomies

By LIKHA VEER | INNLIVE

In Chapla Naik, a tiny village in Karnataka’s Kalaburgi district close to the state border with Telangana, two women died this year.

Arati (name changed) died of pancreatic cancer. Sumana bai (name changed) died of sepsis in her abdomen. What the two women had in common with each other—and with many other women in the village—is that they were aged less than 30, and they had recently undergone hysterectomies.

Focus: 'Nicky Joseph' Now As 'Aeysha Jabeen' - An ISIS Recruiter Extradicted in Dubai, Arrested in Hyderabad

By LIKHA VEER | INNLIVE

An Indian woman allegedly involved in recruiting people for the dreaded Islamic State terror outfit was on Friday deported by UAE and subsequently arrested in Hyderabad.

A 37-year-old Afsha Jabeen alias 'Nicky Joseph' hails from Hyderabad but had been portraying herself as a British national while luring youth for IS through social media, officials said. She was deported along with husband and children.

Access To Health: Nowhere Near To Being A Healthy Nation

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SPECIAL REPORT
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The out-of-pocket health expenditure by the poor is spiraling and the government spending on public health care is reducing. The existing public health programes and insurance schemes are failing; private health care sector is not properly regulated; INNLIVE finds the health of our nation worrisome.

Despite our efforts and best wishes, our modus vivendi, work atmosphere and environment often lead to situations where we have to consult medics and get treatment. The Country Cooperation Strategy brief of the World Health Organization (WHO) informs that India accounts for 21 percent of the world’s global burden of disease.

Why The Cleanest Capital Tag Doesn't Amuse Bangalore?

The Swachh Bharat Mission has ranked Bangalore as India's "cleanest capital" and Bangaloreans can't decide whether to celebrate or utter a collective blah.

The reason: the city stinks, literally. Indeed, Bangalore has been struggling with a garbage crisis for five years now, and despite the promises of successive governments, it's nowhere near being resolved.

A series of agitations beginning in 2011 to force the state to act hasn't done much good either.

So, when the survey was released by the urban development ministry on 8 August, Bangalore's residents understandably wondered on what basis their city had been chosen the 7th cleanest overall.

Electricity Conundrum In India: Idle Generators In The Midst Of Acute Power Deficit In Telangana & Andhra

The Southern region of India is expected to face high energy deficit this year while the Western and Eastern region will have a surplus of energy generation. INNLIVE explains why such regional skew in energy generation and energy consumption exists and what it will take to resolve it.

Southern India is expected to face a severe electricity shortage this year. The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) in its latest annual forecast anticipates the energy deficit in the southern electricity grid to be over 11 percent, equivalent to a generation capacity deficit of 4000 MW. For Karnataka and Telangana, the forecasted energy deficit is greater than 16 percent.

Special Focus: Why My Domestic Help Would Rather Send Her Kid To A Private School Than Public School?

My domestic help Ruksana has a seven-year-old daughter and a four year-old son. She enrolled them in a private school in the neighbourhood instead of the government primary school. Reason: No proper food, education and facilities. 

At the government school she could benefit from the Right to Education (RTE) Act which guarantees eight years of free, quality education to all children aged six to fourteen years. Instead, she shells out nearly Rs 800 a month for fees plus a good chunk on miscellaneous – books, uniforms, school activities, etc.

How 'Americans' Zoomed Into India’s Car Rental Market?

Four years ago, it came as a big shock to Americans Greg Moran and David Back that India lacked any short-term car rental services. So in 2013, the two University of Pennsylvania graduates, who frequently used such services in the US, decided to fill that void.

“For the first two or three months we were in disbelief,” Moran explained. “We knew that it would be a huge opportunity—whether we do it or someone else does.”

Today, their startup Zoomcar is among the largest self-driven car rental companies in India.

Focus: Where Are The Free School Textbooks For Children?

By Rati Kumar in Bhopal

In August last year, the a vernacular newspaper reported from Varanasi, that none of the students of class I, II and III had school text books. The whole of July had gone by without anything being taught in schools and the students spent most of their time playing. Varanasi is just as an example; the situation across the country is equally disappointing.

According to the Right to Education (RTE) Act 2009, every child in a primary school should have text books available on time i.e. at the beginning of the academic year. But the reality is far from what the Act stipulates. In fact, most children do not receive school books and even those who do, don’t necessarily get all the books and rarely at the beginning of the academic year.

Alert: Is Yasin Bhatkal Planning To Escape From Hyd Jail?

By Abdul Rehman

SECURITY ALERT: World's notorious terrorist outfit, Indian Mujahideen's co-founder, Yasin Bhatkal, who is lodged in the high security Cherlapally central prison in Hyderabad, dropped a major bombshell when he reportedly told his wife that he would soon be out of jail with the help from Damascus.

According to intelligence sources, they had this information a couple of days back and it is said that the first information in this regard had come from New Delhi. It is learnt that the security agencies had kept a tab on the phone of Bhatkal’s wife Zahida.

Meet The Fastest Disappearing Community In India - 'Siddhis' Of Indians And Pakistanis Of African Origin

By Swara Bose 
Group Special Correspondent

When people think of Africans in Indian history, Malik Ambar tends to be the first name to come to mind. Brought to Ahmadnagar as a warrior-slave in the 16th century, he rose to be the general of the Deccan sultanate’s army—and eventually its regent.


Yet, Ambar was only the most successful of thousands of Africans brought to India by Arab and Portuguese slavers across the Arabian Sea. Thousands of others came as mercenaries and merchants. Today, the Sidis—as people of African origin living in India for centuries call themselves—are a fast disappearing community. Separated by appearance, if not by culture, they are largely misunderstood.

Success Story: How A US Chip-Maker Unwittingly Became An Incubator For 'Indian Entrepreneurs Group'?

In 1985, the American chip designer Texas Instruments (TI) set up a research and development centre in Bengaluru—then mostly pensioners’ paradise far from becoming the technology hub it is today.

Over the years, the company hired the best talent from India’s finest engineering colleges to strengthen its operations. And these graduates were attracted by TI because, among other things, its salaries typically bested other options at that time.

The Fortune 500 company started out as a small oil and gas company in 1930. In 1958, TI entered the semiconductor business. So far, the Texas-based chipmaker, with a market capitalisation of $56 billion, has more than 40,000 patents to its name.

E-Retailing Boom In India - 'The Return Of Corner Stores'

INNLIVE Media Team

Startups are taking e-commerce to small towns by partnering with mom-and-pop stores to set up kiosks with product catalogues. Customers get the shopkeeper to order products they normally do not have access to. It's online shopping, offline.

At Nisha Textiles, a 1,200-sqft two-storeyed apparel store in Cherupuzha, a small town in Kannur district of north Kerala, a queue of customers waits for a turn to shop on a device in a kiosk. The kiosk has a catalogue of products, such as gadgets and apparel, which are not available in the town but the tech-savvy shopkeeper will order for them online.

Focus: Is Your 'Blood Sample' Flowing Down The Lab Sink?

By Shashikant Gowda in Bangalore

EXCLUSIVE: The mal-administration, unnecessary tests, forced hospitalizations to meet the targets set for employed physicians, and the infamous but real ‘sink test’: the shocking realities in the private healthcare sector are many, as INNLIVE  finds out at a panel discussion on the issue. Is more regulation and vigil is the need of the hour?

According to a survey conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO), six crore Indians fell below the poverty-line in 2010 due to their spending on healthcare. Another study in 2011 estimates that on average, 3.9 crore people in India descend into poverty each year under the burden of health expenses. “Health expenditures”, this paper states, “are responsible for more than half of Indian households falling into poverty.” Taking huge loans, or selling land-holdings and jewellery, while spending a lion’s share of savings is common practice among the masses.

Father's Day News: Bengaluru 'Father's Day' Event Draws Ire Of Mother's Groups For Advancing 'Patriarchal Agenda'

By Ragini Gowda in Bangalore

Father’s Day in Bengaluru will be a little different this year. Though June 21 is characterised by sentimental greeting-card slogans and fuzzy wishes in most parts of the world, a vociferous debate between father’s rights groups and women’s advocates will give the day a somewhat harder edge in India’s Silicon Valley.

An annual protest by divorced men fighting for access to their children runs into a squall of protest after a press conference features a French diplomat accused of raping his daughter.

How Mukesh Ambani's Loss-Making Private Firm Has Got Public Banks To Restructure Its Loans And Stability?

By M H Ahssan
Group Editor in Chief

Loss-making Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure has been the beneficiary of favourable decisions by the government and banks.

A loss-making company controlled by India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, who heads the country's biggest private corporate entity, Reliance Industries Limited, has successfully managed to reschedule repayments of its loans to banks. Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure Limited, the closely-held firm whose shares are not listed on stock exchanges, has a colourful and controverisal past.

Sperm To Slaughter: The Shocking Abuse Of Bulls In India

In March 2015, two Indian states criminalized the sale of beef and the slaughter of all bulls, cows and calves, ostensibly guided by the ethic of cattle protectionism enshrined in Hinduism. 

Typically, religious and political cattle protectionism tends to focus on slaughter prohibition and the last stages of the cattle's lifecycle, ignoring the enormous scale of abuse and exploitation that cattle endure from birth for their labour, and products drawn from their bodies. The object of protectionism is also usually the cow, given her iconic status as Mother Cow and her visible role in dairy production.

A 'Stone Unturned': Rediscovering Bangaluru's Heritage

Every day I travel from my home in Bangalore to Electronics City. You've no idea how exasperating it is to cross the flyover known as Silk Board Junction if you haven't experienced it yourself. I have vented my frustration on the traffic here in innumerable Facebook statuses and tweets. 

But yesterday was different. I was actually excited about crossing Silk Board. The reason: I was visiting a small village called Begur alongside Hosur Road. This unremarkable place has garnered attention thanks to the excavation of a rock with early medieval inscriptions in the 1000-year-old Naganatheshwara Temple.

Many Indians Are Joining Islamic State, Spooks Admit: IB

In a startling acknowledgement, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) has for the first time reported that a total of 11+ Indians, including the four youths from Kalyan in Maharashtra, have joined the global terror group, Islamic State (IS). 

The secret report has also identified five Indians who have died in the Iraq-Syria warzone fighting for the jihadi group as it attempts to establish a caliphate.

While Areeb Majeed, one of the Kalyan youth, returned to India and was taken into custody by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), five Indians are still fighting the ‘holy war’, according to the intelligence inputs gathered. 

Investigation: 'They Still Die In The Govt Labour Rooms'

INNLIVE team goes undercover to see how women are treated in a large government facility in Kolkata and found the unimaginable truths and dwell the reality behind these practices direct under the governmental controlled medical services.

Munmun Mukherjee is a good patient. She lies quiet on the white stone delivery table of the government hospital in Kolkata but for an occasional low moan. Even this is muted, the edge of her voice flattened, as if she knows that she needs to be on her best behaviour. A slim, dusky woman, she looks tidy even in her tired, crumpled nightie.

The 'Deep Crisis' In The 'Great Indian Education Bazaar'!

From asking students to resolve matters through ‘other means’ to convincing naive aspirants with false promises, private educational institutions have earned themselves the adage of ‘scamsters’.

Anil Sadagopal, a well-known educationist calls it the ‘Kumbhakarna-like sleep’. Even after years and years of hoarse chants from activists, policy-makers, children, youth and adults — quality education that is supposed to be a fundamental right to all, is still a dream in India. It is perhaps for this very reason that Sadagopal had demanded the Indian state to wake up from its slumber.