News stories by Ranjita Biswas, page 2

While shoot-at-sight orders are now effectively keeping rhinoceros poachers at bay, an aggressive weed is threatening the one-horned ungulate in one of its last retreats - the Kaziranga National Park (KNP) in eastern Assam state.

Majuli island on the Brahmaputra river in the eastern Indian state of Assam is quickly losing its landmass to erosion. Majuli has long been regarded as one of the largest inhabited river islands in the world along with Ilha de Marajo of Brazil.

It was with some trepidation that Nivvedan, a student at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - Bombay, helped launch ‘Saathi’ (Companion), catering to the needs of people with different sexual orientations on campus.

Sakina Bibi is a sex worker in the red light area of Kalabagan in Murshidabad, a border district in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal where everything from cattle to electronic goods, from rice and sugar to cough syrup, and women, are being smuggled.

In a small, dingy and humid room inside a house in Metiabruz, a poor Muslim- dominated locality in Kolkata in eastern India, at least 20 Muslim women, aged 16 to 28, can hardly contain their enthusiasm as they talk about their aspirations and why they decided to study information technology (IT), a short-term course offered for a minimal fee by a non-government organisation operating in their area.

Muslim religious leaders may seem too conservative to promote the message of safe sex to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic. But that image seems to be changing. Thanks to community-based organisations and young social entrepreneurs working quietly in villages.

A day after the Delhi High Court's landmark judgment to overturn a colonial law that criminalised homosexuality, Indians expressed mixed reactions to the verdict.