It is that time of the year again: Christmas has come and gone, the long-awaited holidays have ended, New Year is already here; and the herculean list of resolutions on your wall is making you even more forlorn every passing day. And if any kind of a diet was on your list, you can forget about it with the coming winter festivals that India has been celebrating long before Christmas and New Year.

Pongal, Bihu, Lohri, Khichdi, Makar Sankranti, the names are many but the significance is one — to thank the universe for a bountiful harvest. Like all harvest festivals around the world, this one is centered around food too. Lets look at what the country is feasting on this January.

[Khichdi from UP]

Khichdi of the North

In Punjab, the festival is celebrated on the eve of Makar Sankranti as Lohri. Friends and families gather together, light bonfires and celebrate with music and dance while snacking on gajjak, chikki, peanuts, and popcorn — all local seasonal harvests. The meals, which are laboriously cooked through the day by the older women of the house, typically consist of sarson ka saag and makki ki roti, accompanied by white butter and gur, or jaggery, and are often finished with a generous helping of pudding made with sugarcane juice and rice called raskheer.

Unlike Punjab, the celebration of Sankranti in Uttar Pradesh is more sober and religious. It also marks the beginning of the auspicious month of Magh, and is celebrated with a dip in the holy Ganges early in the morning. The ritual is followed by donating generous portions of black lentils and rice, along with sesame and jaggery, to the poor and needy. If you happen to be in the heart of U.P., you cannot escape the strong scent of black lentil khichdi wafting through the lanes and bylanes of its dusty towns. Such is the importance of the dish in this part, that the festival is also called Khichdi among locals.

[Peethas from Assam. Pic courtesy Naju Medhi]

Revelry for rice in the East

Poush Parbon happens to be one of the most celebrated days in Bengal. It is that time of the year when the whole family gathers around the rannaghar, or the kitchen, in anticipation of pitha, a Bengali version of the crepe. The crepe, or pitha, made with rice flour, and filled with coconut, date palm jaggery, and sometimes, reduced milk, is a delicacy unparalleled in its texture and flavour. The main meal, here too, is often khichdi, although not the strong black lentil version of the North, but a softer, smoother mix of vegetables, lentils and rice served with various kinds of pan-fried vegetables like aloo bhaja, begun bhaja, and ucche bhaja. (potato, brinjal and bitter gourd fries). The crispness of these bhajas complements the softness of the khichdi perfectly.

Much like Bengal, Assam also celebrates the festival with rice. A typical Bihu eve is celebrated around a big bonfire called meji, with the whole community munching on various kinds of rice fritters, also called pitha — til pitha, narikel pitha, ghila pitha — made with sesame, coconut, jaggery, and rice flour. This is followed by a lavish feast of lentils, fish, duck, various other varieties of meat like pork, chicken and mutton, along with labra, a mishmash of mixed vegetables in local spices, a mash made of roasted sweet potato, and rice. The meal is washed down with some more pitha. The most interesting part of the food, however, remains the 108 varieties of saag (greens) that are essential for the Sankranti lunch. The greens, cooked in different ways, are eaten with boiled rice and ghee, and are supposed to cleanse and strengthen your system.

[Chikki, Gazzak, Rewari, Mongfali]

Savouries from the West

Unlike the North and East, the West neither lights a fire, nor bathes in the ice-cold waters of holy rivers, but celebrates the festival by flying kites in the lukewarm rays of the winter sun. Celebrated as Uttarayan, the festival is marked by colourful kites against the azure skies of Gujarat. Scientifically, this activity helps rid the body of infections and helps pile on Vitamin D for months to come; socially, it helps one connect with the community. No connect in Gujarat can be completed without food, and food remains an equally significant part of Uttarayan.

While things like jalebi, chikki, chavanu (various savoury mixtures), dhokla, and khichdi are popular, the day truly belongs to undhiyu puri. Made with green beans, new baby potatoes, sweet potatoes, yam and eggplant, with fried fenugreek dumplings added to the mushy mixture, undhiyu is prepared in a gorgeous mix of local spices and sesame oil, and cooked in a clay oven or an earthen pot. The cooking process is a treat to watch, and eating it is a celebration in itself.

We can, perhaps, hold undhiyu responsible for the failure of all New Year resolutions of dieting. If undhiyu rules the roost in Gujarat, puran poli is the flavour of the season in Maharashtra. Made with wheat flour, lentils, jaggery and cardamom, puran poli is Maharashtra's version of the pitha. Eaten with a generous dose of ghee, this delicate amalgamation of textures and flavours is supposed to nurture both body and mind. And then there is tilgul, another version of gajak or rewari. Made with sesame seeds and jaggery, the tiny yet fortifying laddoos prepare you for the season and provide your body with strength and vitality.

[Pongal]

Payasam and Pongal of the South

In Tamil, the word Pongal, which literally means 'boiling over', refers to rice cooked in milk and with jaggery. The main dish — Chakarai Pongal — is made with rice, jaggery and Bengal gram, all boiled in milk. Two varieties of Pongal — the salty one known as 'ven pongal' and the sweet one known as 'Sarkkarai pongal' — are prepared on the second day. Every household greets people with rangolis at their entrance. People wear new clothes and worship the rain, sun and farm animals.

Towns and villages inwear a festive look in Andhra with colourful kites, rangolis, decorated bulls and cock fights. The three—day festival begins with Bhogi where community bonfires are lit on the streets with household waste. During this festival, the most important item that is cooked is Pongali which is a rice pudding cooked in milk. Several other special dishes are also cooked like sweet rice cake or ariselu. Animals are decorated on this auspicious day and races are organized.

In Karnataka, a special dish is prepared. The ingredients of this sweet dish Ellu are coconut, sesame seeds and sugar. It is customary for the people to exchange this sweet dish with friends, relatives and neighbors. It is a token to show that hence forth the relationship will be as sweet as Ellu with no bitterness involved. In Kerala, it is marked by a ritual of boiling rice allowing it to boil over the pot. Later it is garnished with dry fruits. Keralites believe that it is good to see this act as it bring prosperity. This delicious dish is then offered to Mother Nature thanking lord Sun and nature for providing happiness. Several other sweet dishes are also made on this day.

This piece first appeared in That Girl In Muddy Boots

(The opinions expressed in this post are the personal views of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of HuffPost India. Any omissions or errors are the author's and HuffPost India does not assume any liability or responsibility for them.)

MUMBAI -- The only openly gay prince in India is throwing open his palace doors to lesbians, gays, transgender and other Indians shunned for their sexuality.

Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil, heir apparent to the throne of Rajpipla in western Gujarat state, said it was particularly hard to come out in small-town India, where traditional values hold sway and heterosexual relations are the norm.

"People still face a lot of pressure from their families when they come out, being forced to marry, or thrown out of their homes. They often have nowhere to go, no means to support themselves," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

So the prince, 52, is building a centre for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT) on the grounds of his ancestral palace.

"I am not going to have children, so I thought, why not use this space for a good purpose?" Gohil said, adding that he will offer rooms, a medical facility and training in English and vocational skills to help people find jobs.

Gohil came out to his family more than a decade ago, prompting his mother to take out a newspaper advertisement disowning him. Erstwhile royalty in India are still in the spotlight, many holding positions in the government.

After coming out, Gohil set up the Lakshya Trust, a charity for LGBT people in his conservative home state, and became a champion for gay rights. He has made numerous international appearances, including on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

He is a vocal critic of India's colonial-era law that criminalises consensual sexual relations between same sex adults. Earlier this week, the country's top court said it would reconsider its 2013 decision to uphold the law.

"Lifting the law will encourage more people to come out and live their lives freely. But it may also mean more people in need of support," Gohil said.

Gohil said he is renovating and extending his palace, built in 1927, on the 15-acre site, installing solar panels for power, and reserving some land for organic farming.

An online crowdfunding campaign and donations are financing the centre, which will be managed by his charity, he said.

Gohil's high profile has helped the LGBT community in India enormously, said Harish Iyer, a gay rights activist who hosts a radio show dedicated to LGBT issues.

"For him to be one of us, the stakes are even higher, so providing this space is a great gesture," he said.

"We are lucky to have many LGBT-friendly spaces in cities like Mumbai and Delhi. But in smaller towns, there are not so many places, and that is where they are most needed."

Come February 8, Cosmopolitan magazine will crown the winner of its Sexiest SA Men 2018 campaign.

Every year, readers get to vote for their sexiest man from a list of 12 finalists.

This year's competition also shines the spotlight on #AdoptDontShop, encouraging people to adopt pets instead of buying -- which explains why the finalists are all posing with dogs.

All the dogs are rescues from the SPCA, and every single one of them needs a home. To adopt a pet, visit your nearest SPCA.

Here are the finalists:

Blake "The Champ" Williams. Aged 26. Hip-hop dancer and motivational speaker.

Brendan Peyper. Aged 21. Singer, songwriter.

Devin Paisley. Aged 32. Photographer, model and entrepreneur.

Jesse Suntele. Aged 25. Hip-hop artist, actor and BET presenter.

Josh Wantie. Aged 26. Singer, producer and model.

Katleho Sinivasan. Aged 26. TV presenter.

Luigi Vigliotti. Aged 30. Entrepreneur.

Mthokozisi "Dash" Mkhathini. Aged 27. Entertainer and entrepreneur.

Nicolas Van Graan. Aged 22. Model.

Oluwatoyin "Toyin" Oyeneye. Aged 24. Model and entrepreneur.

Rudi Witkowsky. Aged 27. Accountant, model and personal trainer.

Tshego Mosupye. Aged 26. MTV Base VJ.

The winner will be announced at the Sexiest Party of the Year, scheduled to take place in Bryanston at Rockets.

Ayanda Thabethe will host the evening, while Twins On Decks are the main entertainers.

You can vote for your fave here.

In the days since a newspaper's investigation exposed a possible breach in India's biometric database of millions, several questions have been raised about the security of the identity card the government of India wants every citizen to register for. In all the controversy surrounding the Aadhaar card and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the government agency that issues them, there's a humanitarian question that should have been asked, but wasn't — on access to night shelters by India's homeless as a cold wave grips North India. That's when the Supreme Court stepped in.

During a hearing on lack of night shelters for homeless people, the Social Justice Bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur asked the Uttar Pradesh government if a permanent address was mandatory for Aadhaar enrollment to avail of welfare services.

The Uttar Pradesh government indicated that the homelesswere required to have documents, Aadhaar included, if they wanted to use night shelters. The court wasn't amused.

"So, how do homeless people get Aadhaar if they have no home or a permanent address," Justice Lokur reportedly said. "Does this mean that they do not exist for the Government of India," he added.

According to the 2011 Census, there are 1.77 million homeless people in India.

According to The Hindu, Additional Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the UP government, argued that the urban homeless were migrants from villages and therefore were likely to have permanent address proofs.

"We are talking about human beings who have no place to stay. Those who have no place to stay have to be given a place to live," Justice Lokur is reported to have observed. "As per records and statistics available, it seems that 90 crore Aadhaar cards had been issued by the government, but what about the people who are homeless and destitute. How will they make Aadhar if they don't have an address," he said.

READ: 'We're Not Shooting The Messenger': UIDAI On The Back Foot After Media Slams FIR Against Reporter Who Exposed Data Leak

In her investigative report, Tribune correspondent Rachna Khaira claimed that access to the Aadhaar database of more than 1 billion citizens was being sold for just Rs 500 ($8). The Tribune newspaper said it bought login details to the Aadhaar website from touts on WhatsApp and had access to personal information such as the names, numbers and addresses of millions.

To address concerns about data security, the UIDAI on Wednesday put in place a two-layer security system, according to reports. The virtual identification for ID holders will entail generating atemporary16-digit random number that can be shared instead of the actual 12-digit Aadhaar number.

According to independent estimates from civil society organizations, there are an estimated 150,000 – 200,000 homeless people in Delhi, 40,000 – 50,000 in Chennai, 200,000 in Mumbai (including Navi Mumbai), 100,000 in Ahmedabad and 150,000 in Kolkata.

The traditional fire pot of Kashmir helps people keep themselves warm in the harsh winter, retaining its utility despite the advent of modern appliances, and assuring thousands of men and women their livelihood

By Athar Parvaiz*, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir

Besides woolens, one thing that Kashmiris think of when preparing for the chilling winter cold is the kangri, an earthen bowl encased in an exquisitely woven wicker basket. Kashmir experiences harsh winters, with temperatures as low as -8⁰ C, but Kashmiris have traditionally used kangri and pheran to keep them from the cold.

The kangri, or kanger as it is locally known, is filled with embers and held against the body under a pheran, an overgarment unique to Kashmir, for providing warmth. Kashmiris call the kangri a mobile heater as it can be carried along anywhere under the pheran. Some keep the fire-pot under the blanket until it makes the bedding warm enough to sleep comfortably and then remove it.

These local inventions, cherished by Kashmiris, keep serving the people of this beautiful land despite the onslaught of modern-day heating appliances in recent years. Kangris not only keep Kashmiris warm during the winter months, but also provide the makers with a livelihood.

Feeding families

Artisan families that make the kangris are spread across Kashmir. Potters make the earthen bowl. The kangri-maker weaves the wicker basket around the bowl, providing two handles so that it can be carried easily, besides a base for balancing the kangri on the floor.

Making the kangri needs skill and patience. Men and women collect the slender wicker twigs from the forest. They process the twigs by scraping, peeling, boiling and drying them before weaving them into kangris. As each process requires skilled hands, thousands earn their living in the production of kangris.

"Making kangris, besides other wicker items, has sustained our family for decades," Wazir Ahmad Ganie, a kangri-maker of Lalpora in Kupwara district, told VillageSqaure.in. "I enjoy doing it as long as I get buyers."

The numerous shops that sell kangris are proof that getting buyers is not difficult. "I sold around 1,000 kangris last year; and this year, I have sold around 600 so far," Khazir Wani, a shopkeeper in Pattan Market in Baramullah told VillageSquare.in.

November appearance

From the beginning of November, one can see the delectable presence of kangris stacked up for sale in every market across Kashmir. The sale lasts until early spring. Depending on design, each piece costs between Rs 150 and Rs 1,500. But the kangris, which are commonly used for warming, are mostly sold at an affordable price range of Rs 150 to Rs 250.

Besides their utilitarian value, Kashmiris cherish the kangri as a symbol of the culture and traditions of their land. Many Kashmiris use well-decorated kangris as thurible to burn aromatic seeds during weddings and other functions, especially when guests arrive.

Affluent families display kangris in their drawing rooms as a work of art and also present them to non-Kashmiri friends. These artistic kangris are expensive compared to the utilitarian ones used in winter. So, besides during winter, the kangri-makers earn a sizeable income by making artistic pieces.

Subsidiary business

Another small business associated with the use of kangri is making and sale of charcoal. Thousands of families across Kashmir sell charcoal, for use in kangris during the winter months, making a reasonable income.

According to charcoal seller Abdul Rashid, people, especially in rural areas, need charcoal to keep themselves warm. "I make at least Rs 15,000 every winter by selling charcoal," Rashid told VillageSquare.in. For many, selling charcoal during winter brings an additional income.

Recently, the government of Jammu & Kashmir banned burning of leaves and twigs in an effort to control pollution. But people could be seen making charcoal for kangris, thus flouting the ban openly. They were scornful of the ban imposed by the government.

According to Mohammad Sadiq, a Srinagar resident who spoke to VillageSquare.in, charcoal in kangris help them keep warm during power cuts, thus emphasizing the need for availability of charcoal in the market.

Embers glow on

Kashmiris have the option of choosing between kangris and modern day heating appliances such as electric and gas heaters that are available in the market. However, many shopkeepers said that people buy kangris in good numbers despite the availability of electric and gas heaters.

Footpath vendors in Srinagar said that they sell kangris in considerable numbers. "I buy 700 kangris a week and sell all of them," Mumtaz Mir, a footpath vendor in Fateh Kadal, told VillageSquare.in.

With the Kashmir Valley witnessing long power cuts in winter, many find it practical to use kangris to warm their homes. "I have two electric heaters at home. But they are hardly of any use as we get just two hours power supply in 24 hours," said Reyaz Ahmad, a resident of Kupwara.

Some said that even if there is a regular power supply, Kangri would still not lose its significance given its economic viability as compared to electric and gas heaters. "Using kangri for heating doesn't cost much," said Ahmad. "One can live without electricity and internet in Kashmir, but not without kangri," quipped Mohammad Mairaj, a student, referring to the long power outages in most of the areas in Kashmir, besides the Internet bans.

"Whoever invented it must have been a genius. In spite of modern day technology, we are finding kangri extremely useful," Rafiq Rather, a student in Kashmir University, told VillageSquare.in. It is obvious that the embers in Kashmir's kangris would glow on, keeping people warm in winter and offering livelihood to countless men and women.

Athar Parvaiz is a Srinagar-based journalist.

This article was first published on VillageSquare.in, a public-interest communications platform focused on rural India.

(UPDATE: Copy updated with statement from Anand Vasu, apologising for his reference to Anushka Sharma as a nagging wife)

In a match report for the Economic Times, titled 'Batting carnage as South Africa blast India aside', freelance cricket writer Anand Vasu spared no words to sum up India's play in an ongoing Test match series against South Africa in Cape Town.

"For months India had talked the talk, for passages of play they walked it, but when push came to shove the eleven men chosen to represent the country let themselves down," Vasu wrote.

However, one paragraph in his analysis, stuck out like a sore thumb — in which he compared bowling action by South Africa's Vernon Philander with a sexist stereotype routinely used to mock women.

"Virat Kohli was well set up by Philander, away swingers nagging away more than the newly married Anushka, followed by the one that came in to the right-hander, trapping him in front," Vasu wrote. He was immediately called out by a cricket writer working for Scroll's sports website The Field.

Zenia D'Cunha's tweet criticizing Vasu for using a "wife stereotype" was met with nothing less than wide-eyed incredulity by men failing to understand, once again, why Vasu's analogy was downright offensive.

There were pats on the back for the writer for being "ballsy" in dragging a woman to score cheap gender points in a story that did not require that comparison. Kohli and Sharma, an Indian movie star, got married on 11 December. Sharma's not new to blatant misogyny. She has been blamed for Kohli's performance on the pitch by upset male fans of the cricketing hero.

However, this garden variety sexism is expected from an industry that farms toxic WhatsApp jokes on women for bulk circulation. A mainstream cricket writer to use a "nagging" dig against a woman to make his point beggars belief.

This from a senior journo in ET

A "wife" stereotype in a cricket analysis - a dig at @AnushkaSharma - is not funny or something that should have been published in a leading newspaper to describe an actually good cricketing moment. https://t.co/A6kVwcfvXspic.twitter.com/ygRkYZ6Nli

— ZENIA D'CUNHA (@ZENIADCUNHA) January 10, 2018

However, on Friday, Vasu issued a statement apologising for his lapse. "It was clumsy and wrong", he said.

#fb@imVkohli@AnushkaSharmapic.twitter.com/2rWcsJCjQW

— Anand Vasu (@anandvasu) January 12, 2018

Nagging is a popular stick men have always used to beat women. And jokes on nagging are firmly established in the Indian male psyche as something that even women take in their stride. They assume that it is something inoffensive that women can be labelled with without facing a pushback. In the never-ending list of the variety of sexual abuses women face daily, jokes on identity politics must seem almost benign to Indians.

That the cheap shot was directed at a "newly-married" Sharma — an actor of considerable talent — shows just how deep the misogyny runs. And it continues because men are rarely called out when they make these jokes, emboldening them to get away with more and more. Women who call men out on everyday sexism, especially jokes that seem innocuous, are labelled "humourless".

A perfect example of this is another tweet on the writer's timeline. The photos used in the tweet are self-explanatory. While the writer acknowledged that it's a sexist stereotype, he obviously found no harm in sharing it.

Men too found the analogy ridiculous.

Really @EconomicTimes ? Like you had to bring in Anushka Sharma into something totally unrelated to her? And "nagging"? Fucking crap. pic.twitter.com/pFOvknoqVR

— Ishan Seth (@ishanseth24) January 9, 2018

How on earth did the desk let this get published? https://t.co/2aFxK5AmBJ

— Vinayakk (@vinayakkm) January 10, 2018

Come on @anandvasu , seriously ? Nagging wife ?

— Vamsi Sidda (@VamsiSidda) January 10, 2018

no

— Anand Katakam (@anandkatakam) January 10, 2018

At the time of writing this, the analogy remained in the story, despite flak from many Twitter users.

WASHINGTON — A surprise New Year's Day tweet by President Donald Trump in which he appeared to decree an end to U.S. aid for Pakistan, sent U.S. officials scrambling to suspend security assistance without even knowing how much aid they were freezing, four U.S. officials said.

The decision to freeze up to about $2 billion in security aid, according to a later estimate by U.S. officials, to a nuclear-armed ally is the latest example of how, nearly a year into Trump's presidency, U.S. officials sometimes have to scurry to turn his tweets into policy.

The Trump administration had been weighing an aid freeze for months, including in a meeting of top national security advisers before Christmas. Washington has for years demanded that Islamabad stop providing sanctuary and other support for the Afghan Taliban and the allied Haqqani network.

At the time of Trump's tweet, a U.S. assessment of Pakistani compliance with those demands was still under way. A cohesive U.S. policy - including preparations for possible Pakistani reaction - was not expected to be completed until March or April, three U.S. officials interviewed said.

"None of the elements of a coherent policy was in place, or even close at hand, when the president, in effect, made a policy announcement," said one U.S. official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity. "Despite a mad scramble to backfill a tweet, we still don't have ... an effective policy in place."

Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, did not address whether the tweet had sped up the policy process, saying Trump had made clear his intent to take a new, tougher stance toward Pakistan as part of the Afghanistan war strategy he unveiled in August.

"This action is being taken after months of careful interagency review. Any suggestion to the contrary is false," he said.

The State Department declined to comment.

Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when he posted his tweet at 7:12 a.m. on Jan. 1, after hosting a lavish New Year's Eve party. Until then he had kept a relatively low public profile while he mostly golfed.

The United States, he tweeted, had "foolishly" given Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid and "they have given us nothing but lies and deceit, thinking our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!"

It is not clear what prompted Trump to issue the tweet, which infuriated Pakistani officials. Pakistan's National Security Committee of senior civilian and military chiefs denounced it as "completely incomprehensible." U.S. Ambassador David Hale was summoned to the foreign ministry for an explanation.

Caught by surprise on their New Year's Day holiday, a small group of White House aides and other top officials scrambled to make good on the president's unexpected statement, said a senior U.S. official who was part of the consultations.

There was no time to issue a formal White House policy directive outlining the amount of frozen funds, four officials said.

When the administration confirmed that it was suspending security aid to Pakistan four days after Trump's tweet, the State Department was still not able to quantify how much aid was at stake, underscoring how far U.S. officials had been from implementing any policy before the president's statement.

U.S. officials later said the decision could affect about $1 billion in planned security assistance and $900 million to reimburse Pakistan for counter-terrorism operations.

Another sign of the haste was the failure to give Pakistan the usual diplomatic courtesy of a warning before the president's tweet, U.S. officials said.

Perhaps most seriously, they said, there was no time to prepare for possible retaliation.

TWEET IN SEARCH OF STRATEGY

The Pentagon and State Department were especially concerned that the Pakistani army, which effectively runs foreign policy, might close the air and land corridors on which U.S.-led troops and Afghan forces in landlocked Afghanistan depend for supplies, the officials said. So far, Pakistan has not done so.

At the time the decision was made, there was no agreement with neighboring countries for alternative routes, five U.S. officials said.

"It appeared to be a tweet in search of a strategy," said Dan Feldman, a former U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"There seemed to be a flurry of inter-agency activity after that tweet to arrive at some sort of policy to frame it ... to prove it wasn't just an impulsive tweet."

It was not the first time that U.S. officials have been caught off guard by Trump's fondness for formulating policy by tweet.

Last year, Trump tweeted that the U.S. government would not accept transgender people to serve in the military, catching the Pentagon leadership by surprise. His statement eventually had to be walked back.

India launched its 100th satellite on Friday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to project the country as a global low-cost provider of services in space.

A total of 31 small satellites were launched into space on Friday. More than half of the micro and nano satellites were for the Unites States, and the remainder India, Canada, Finland, France, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

"The launch of the 100th satellite by @isro signifies both its glorious achievements and also the bright future of India's space programme," Modi said on Twitter.

India's space programme has a budget of around $4 billion and Modi's government hopes the latest launches will improve its prospects of winning a larger share of the more than $300 billion global space industry.

Modi's government has been promoting a domestic space programme as a demonstration of low-cost technology and last February launched 104 satellites in a single mission, most of them for foreign customers.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) used its workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C40), part of an advanced remote sensing satellite Cartosat-2 series or "eye in the sky", for the Friday launch from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh at 9.28 a.m. (3:58 GMT).

The rocket weighs about 1,323 kgs, said a senior official at state-run ISRO, who did not wish to be named.

India will use its latest satellites for better border surveillance and obtaining high resolution images of the earth.

"PSLV-C40 is a highly sophisticated surveillance tool to keep an eye on Indian borders and will help the government track progress of infrastructure projects," said Pallava Bagla, a science writer and co-author of "Reaching for the Stars: India's Journey to Mars."

Two scientists at ISRO said images collected by the satellites will be used by the Indian security agencies to track military activities in neighbouring Pakistan, China, Bangladesh Sri Lanka and Nepal.

NEW DELHI -- In an unprecedented event in the history of the Indian judiciary, four judges of the Supreme Court appeared to break rank with the sitting Chief Justice of India, while raising concerns about the "administration" of the apex court and its implication on democracy.

Following their meeting with Chief Justice Dipak Misra on Friday morning, the four top judges of the Supreme Court (Jasti Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Kurian Joseph and Madan Lokur) said that circumstances had compelled them to convene a press conference and speak directly to the public.

The main issue appeared to be the assignment of cases by the CJI in the Supreme Court.

"It is a discharge of our debt to the nation that has brought us here," they told reporters who were present at Justice Chelameswar's house. "We believe we have discharged our debt to the nation."

This is the first time that Supreme Court judges have made public the problems inside the highest court of the land.

Describing the event today as "extraordinary" in the history of the country, Justice Chelameswar said, "The administration of the Supreme Court is not in order."

"About a couple of months, four of us gave a signed letter to CJI and we wanted a particular thing to be done. The thing was done but it raised further questions about integrity of the institution," said the second most senior judge of the Supreme Court. "We owe a responsibility to the institution and the nation. Our efforts have failed in convincing CJI to take steps to protect the institution."

"The four of us are convinced that unless this institution is preserved and it maintains its equanimity, democracy will not survive in this country," he said.

Justice Chelameswar confirmed the difference of opinion is about the assignment of the case concerning Brijgopal Harkishan Loya, the judge who was hearing the matter of the allegedly staged killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh.

In 2014, Loya presided over the special court set up by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Mumbai to decide whether Amit Shah, then Home Minister of Gujarat and now the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was involved in Sohrabuddin's death,

Loya, however, was transferred in June 2015, shortly after he had admonished Shah for failing to appear in court. Six months on, Loya died and his death was reported as a heart attack.

"We have seen a lot of wise men but we don't want wise men to tell us later after 20 years that the four of us have sold our souls. We construe this as a responsibility to the nation and we have done it," said Justice Chelameswar.

The four judges did not provide details of their grievances during the press conference, but they released the letter which they had sent to Chief Justice Misra.

"It is too well settled in the jurisprudence of this country that the Chief Justice is only the first amongst equals — nothing more or nothing less. In the matter of the determination of the roster there are well-settled and time-honoured conventions guiding the Chief Justice, be the conventions dealing with the strength of the bench which is required to deal with a particular case or the composition thereof," the judges wrote in the letter.

"There have been instances where case having far reaching consequences for the Nation and the institution had been assigned by the Chief Justices of the Court selectively to the benches 'of their preference' without any rationale basis for such assignment. This must be guarded against at all costs," they wrote.

In November 2017, Chief Justice Misra took over the Medical College Bribery case from Justice Chelameshwar.

Writing in The Wire at the time, Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan said, "I believe the order that has been passed really undermines the order of Justice Chelameswar, the number two judge, referring this matter to five senior most judges of the Supreme Court on Monday. The CJ has passed an order saying that this matter will be listed after two weeks before a bench to be nominated by the Chief Justice."

"So, it's really a very very sad day in the history of the Supreme Court – firstly, I have not seen this kind of extraordinary interest being taken by a Chief Justice in a matter which involves him directly, and secondly, because of the kind of unseemly proceedings which took place in the Supreme Court."

#JudgesPressConference - Here is the letter by Justice Chelameswar, Gogoi, Lokur and Kurian Joseph. 7 page letter. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/XY9tZQZHpL

— Bar & Bench (@barandbench) January 12, 2018

READ: Investigate The Death Of CBI Judge Who Was Hearing The Sohrabuddin Sheikh Case, Says Justice AP Shah

Opinion has been divided on the "extraordinary" move by the four Supreme Court judges.

Supreme Court advocate Indira Jaising said, "It was very well done. I think we, the people of India, have a right to know what is going on within the judiciary and I welcome this."

Former Attorney-General of India Soli Sorabjee expressed his disappointment at the development. "I'm very very upset about this. I wish they hadn't done it. It will really have repercussions on the public image of the independence of the judiciary," he told CNN-IBN.

BJP leader and Rajya Sabha lawmaker Subramanian Swamy called for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention. Swamy told ANI, "We can't criticize them, they are men of great integrity and have sacrificed a lot of their legal career, where they could've made money as senior counsels. We must respect them. PM must ensure that the four judges and the CJI, in fact, the whole Supreme Court come to one opinion and proceed further."

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As the world ushered in the new year, a seven-year-old girl went missing in Kasur district of Pakistan's Punjab. The girl's parents were away in Saudi Arabia at the time on a pilgrimage and she was living with her aunt. Conflicting reports say she had either stepped out for tuition classes or was headed to a nearby Koran reading class and never returned. Four days later, on 9 January, her body was found dumped near a trash yard in the neighbourhood. Post-mortem reports confirmed that she had been raped multiple times before she was strangulated. The report also suggested that she was dead days before her body was found.

The girl's father initially refused to bury her body. "We will not bury her until we get justice," he told reporters. "We are now afraid of letting our children leave the home. How was our child kidnapped from a busy market?" However, the girl's remains were laid to rest on 10 January and thousands joined her funeral procession.

Around the same time, CCTV footage showing the girl being led away by an unidentified man was beamed across television channels in Pakistan.

12th INCIDENT IN A YEAR IN SAME LOCATION

The rape and murder has fomented massive protests on social media and on the ground in parts of Pakistan. One of the several aspects of the case fuelling public outrage is the fact that this murder was the 12th such known incident in a year reported from 'within a two-kilometre radius in the past 12 months', according to The Express Tribune.

Brutality apart, Kasur has been known to be a hotbed for child rapists and sexual predators for years. Despite protests from locals and extensive media coverage of the dangers faced by children in the area, the police and authorities seem to be dragging their feet on taking resolute action against the problem. In fact, the father of the deceased 7-year-old told reporters that soon after she went missing, his family had complained to the police but the latter didn't launch search operations of the scale they should have.

"My relatives and neighbours told me that the police used to come, have food and leave. While they didn't do anything, my friends and family spent day and night looking for my daughter," Ameen Ansari told local media.

Kasur is not new to accusations of child sex abuse. In fact, for years, it has been a hotbed of crimes, especially of sexual nature, against children. According to a Washington Post report, "In 2015, police busted a gang running a child sex ring. The gang had allegedly abducted and assaulted at least 280 children since 2009. The families of the abducted children were often blackmailed, and video clips and images of the assaults were sold online."

The Express Tribune reported that in 2017, 129 cases of child sexual abuse were reported from Kasur alone. "Of them, 34 were abductions, 23 were rapes, 19 sodomy, 17 attempted rapes, six abduction and rapes, and four abduction and gang-rapes," the report quotes a child rights activist as saying. A fact-finding team of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission which met victims in the Kasur village where the child pornography racket was busted after 2015, observed that the villagers knew about the videos but kept mum on the same. The report said: "The villagers kept silent about the matter for many months because of the scandalous nature of the clippings and because of close relationship with many of the people concerned on both sides, the victims and the accused."

According to the report, when some of the parents of the victims mustered courage to report the crimes, not only did the police dismiss their claims, they ganged up with the accused to harass the complainants. "Despite FIRs being filed since early July 2015, the police took no action against many of the accused.While the police made no progress in investigation, they openly colluded with the accused party and aided the intimidation and harassment of the victim families and their supporters. This led to a protest demonstration by the complainant families and other villagers in August." The demonstrations took a violent turn leading to the villagers to clash with the police. It was only after these clashes that the crimes against children in Kasur was revealed to the media, the report adds.

The report carried the testimonies of various victims and families, whose children were not only abused, but they blackmailed with the clips of the assault. All of the families complained that the pornographers and rapists extorted huge sums of money from the families for years, threatening to make the clips public.

PROTESTS

While on social media, a hashtag demanding justice for the victim went viral, protests seized Kasur on the ground. As an angry mob tried to storm the deputy commissioner of police's office, police fired at them leading to the death of two protesters. Later, Dawn reported, 6 security personnel, including 4 policemen, were arrested for firing at the crowd.

HuffPost India couldn't confirm if the victims parents have given explicit consent on the sharing of her pictures, but her picture has been plastered all over social media and news reports. However, Saif Ullah Cheema, a reporter with a Pakistani newspaper told HuffPost India that no media house is allowed to publish the victim's picture without blurring according to a diktat by PEMRA (Pakistan Electronic Media Regularity Authority). Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan posted a picture of the girl condemning the assault and the same was retweeted over 12,000 times.

However, activists pointed out that the road to justice will be long and tricky and the protests could just be a flash in the pan. Shumaila Hussain Shahani, founder of All Pakistan Feminists Association, pointed out that the protests particularly intensified after the victim's picture started doing the rounds of social media. Perhaps, putting a face to the victim fanned public anger more than just stating facts would -- after all, such incidents had been being reported from the area for months now and there weren't mass protests against the same across Pakistan and abroad over it.

Shahani told HuffPost India, "According to a news report over 700 cases of child sexual abuse have been reported since 2015 in Kasur including that year's child sexual abuse ring. Eleven children were kidnapped raped and murdered in the same manner last year but we chose to not say anything because well we are moody. Another rape and murder of a 15 year old from Faisalabad was reported hours after the girl's murder was reported but do we care? There have been 2 more cases since, one is in Sukkur rapist set the girl on fire after he was met with resistance. Another rape and murder of 16 years old have been reported in another city too." While politicians may be crying themselves hoarse now, promising justice, a lot of this outrage is hypocritical, she added.

"Protests are demanding State to include sex education in our curriculum, to provide us space for dialogue on sex education, sex abuse etc. Because last time a TV drama Udaari touched the issue of pedophilia our media regulatory authority PEMRA issued a notice to the channel for showing obscenity? So speaking about issues is obscene for the State, how are we supposed to spread awareness if not talk about issues. How else do we save kids if not give them sex education?" Shahani asked. However, she added that while the political class stuck to regressive 'we-have-to-protect-our-mothers-daughters' rhetoric, several sensible people also took over social media to emphasise the importance of apprising children and parents of these dangers.

'Unprecedented.'

We have been hearing this word regularly when it comes to matters of the Supreme Court of India over the past few months.

Be it two petitions before the Supreme Court seeking a monitored inquiry into allegations of corruption against the higher judiciary in matters related to recognition of medical colleges. Or be it the resulting brouhaha over the matter being bulldozed by different benches of the Supreme Court than the ones originally hearing the two petitions separately. This resulted in the Supreme Court declaring that the Chief Justice of India was the 'master of the roster' with unbridled authority under the Constitution to determine which bench will hear what case. The way the entire matter was handled was unprecedented.

On the heel of these events, two senior judges of the Supreme Court, who are also members of the collegium, wrote to the Chief Justice of India criticising his handling of the functions of the collegium. They specifically recorded their opposition to publication of collegium resolutions as they perceived it to be a breach of human rights of sitting judges against whom adverse remarks may be recorded in the resolutions. The publication of the resolutions and the subsequent public criticism by senior judges was unprecedented.

The storm clouds were gathering with the apparent rift in the collegium culminating in the events of today which resulted in the Supreme Court being caught in the eye of the storm. The second to fifth senior-most judges of the Supreme Court held an unprecedented press conference today and opened a Pandora's box in public. They apprised the people of the country of their unhappiness with the administration of the Supreme Court led by the current Chief Justice and informed everyone of their failed attempts to resolve all issues. They also made public a two-month old letter addressed to the Chief Justice of India which requested him to address their grievances. What broke the camel's back was the issue of an inquiry into the death of Judge Loya which the Supreme Court is currently seized of.

The letter specifically expresses displeasure in the manner the Chief Justice has been allocating important matters to certain benches to the exclusion of benches headed by more senior judges. It also expresses reservations on handling of the finalization of the memorandum of procedure to appoint judges of the higher judiciary by the collegium. The letter stopped short of listing various instances which the four senior judges are unhappy about. This left the letter at the mercy of public discourse with guesses being hazarded from all quarters.

An eminent senior advocate recently wrote an article severely criticizing the manner in which the Chief Justice of India is exercising his administrative functions. My guess is as good as yours if this was the cue for the press conference.

Contrary to rumours, after the press conference, the Chief Justice of India held court as if nothing had happened and proceeded to take care of the matters of the day.

However, the dynamics of the Supreme Court have forever changed. The chain of events culminating in the press conference has ensured that the institution of the Supreme Court, the guardian of the Constitution, has been severely damaged. The appropriateness of the press conference will be argued upon for days to come. The consequences of the press conference will be far and wide.

The rift may affect the constitution of the bench for the Aadhar matter, or for any other matter of constitutional or public importance, as the actions of the Chief Justice of India will be under public scrutiny. The government's reaction to today's events remains to be seen with reports emerging that the Prime Minister summoned the union law minister to discuss the developments.

At the end of the day, the credibility of the judiciary has suffered a blow with dirty linen being aired in public. Unprecedented.

A seven-member delegation from the Bar Council of India (BCI) will meet the judges of the Supreme Court in a bid to resolve the controversy over assignment of cases by the Chief Justice of India.

"We have unanimously decided to form a 7-member delegation of the Council who will meet honourable judges of the Supreme Court," BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra told journalists on Saturday. "We want that the matter be solved at the earliest."

Mishra was addressing a press conference after a BCI meeting was called earlier in the day to discuss an unprecedented decision by four of the five senior-most judges of the apex court to publicly air their grievances with CJI Dipak Misra.

ALSO READ: In One Stroke, The Dynamics Of The Indian Supreme Court Have Forever Changed

"We've given an opportunity to Rahul Gandhi & political parties to talk about our judiciary, it's unfortunate," added Mishra. "On behalf of Bar Council of India, I request him & other political parties to not politicise the matter."

Prime Minister and law minister had said yesterday itself that it is judiciary's internal matter and govt won't be interfering in the matter, and we appreciate the government's stand: Manan Kumar Mishra, Chairman, Bar Council of India pic.twitter.com/gjmoEioxHc

— ANI (@ANI) January 13, 2018

Calling the issue a "family matter", Mishra claimed the issue will be resolved soon.

On Friday, four of the five senior-most judges in the Supreme Court broke rank with the CJI to raise concerns on how sensitive cases were being assigned to certain judges.

"There have been instances where case having far reaching consequences for the Nation and the institution had been assigned by the Chief Justices of the Court selectively to the benches 'of their preference' without any rationale basis for such assignment. This must be guarded against at all costs," they wrote in a letter to CJI earlier last year.

"The four of us are convinced that unless this institution is preserved and it maintains its equanimity, democracy will not survive in this country," said Justice Chelameswar, the second senior-most judge of the apex court.

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More than two weeks after the daughter of a temple priest went missing from Ghaziabad, her mutilated body has been found in a sugarcane field in the neighboring district of Meerut.

The 15-year-old was allegedly kidnapped, gang raped and murdered.

The Times of India reported that the Class X student's body bore marks of torture with cigarette butts.

Bipin Kumar, a neighbor, toldThe Indian Express, "Her father, a local priest, went with police to Meerut. He could not identify her as her face was swollen. She was identified by her mother."

The teenager's father claimed that the police did not act on the complaint which he filed shortly after his daughter went missing on the evening of 26th December from the Modi Nagar area of Ghaziabad.

"Some youths had abducted my daughter. I had got a complaint registered at the Modinagar police station and also produced a mobile number of one the kidnappers, but the police didn't take any effort to trace them," the father told TOI.

The Indian Express reported that Modi Nagar Deputy Superintendent of Police has been transferred and the local police station in-charge suspended for dereliction of duty.

Arvind Kumar Maurya, the superintendent of police in rural Ghaziabad, said that the body has been sent for an autopsy and several teams have been formed to investigate the case.

Both newspapers reported that the deceased had tried to conceal a mobile phone from her family before she disappeared.

Kumar, the neighbor, told IE, "Her mother caught talking on the phone. She asked her how she got the phone, and the girl told her a friend had given it to her. She was beaten up by her mother, who threw the phone into the toilet. A day later, the girl stepped out of the house, where a tap is set up. People thought she had gone to wash her hands, but a while later, she disappeared."

The mother told TOI that the girl had taken the SIM out of the phone and destroyed it.

Local residents staged protests on Saturday.

DHAKA/YANGON - Hamid Hussain, a 71-year-old Rohingya Muslim farmer, first fled Myanmar for Bangladesh in 1992. He went home the next year under a repatriation deal between the two neighbours, only to repeat the journey last September when violence flared once more.

Officials from Myanmar and Bangladesh meet on Monday to discuss how to implement another deal, signed on Nov. 23, on the return of more than 650,000 Rohingya who have escaped an army crackdown since late August. Hussain is one of many who say they fear this settlement may be no more permanent than the last.

"Bangladesh authorities had assured us that Myanmar would give us back our rights, that we would be able to live peacefully," said Hussain, who now lives in a makeshift refugee camp in southeast Bangladesh.

"We went back but nothing changed. I will go back again only if our rights and safety are guaranteed - forever."

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has for years denied Rohingya citizenship, freedom of movement and access to many basic services such as healthcare and education. They are considered illegal immigrants from mainly Muslim Bangladesh.

The authorities have said returnees could apply for citizenship if they can show their forebears have lived in Myanmar. But the latest deal - like the one in 1992 - does not guarantee citizenship and it is unclear how many would qualify.

Monday's meeting in Myanmar's capital Naypyitaw will be the first for a joint working group set up to hammer out the details of the November repatriation agreement. The group is made up of civil servants from both countries.

Two senior Bangladesh officials who are involved in the talks acknowledged that much was left to be resolved and it was unclear when the first refugees could actually return. One of the key issues to be worked out was how the process for jointly verifying the identities of returnees would work, they said.

"Any return is chaotic and complex," said Shahidul Haque, Bangladesh's top foreign ministry official who will lead Dhaka's 14-member team in the talks. "The challenge is to create an environment conducive for their return."

Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay said returnees would be able to apply for citizenship "after they pass the verification process".

Zaw Htay added that Myanmar had proposed that a group of 500 Hindus who fled to Bangladesh and have already agreed to be repatriated, alongside 500 Muslims, could form the first batch of returnees. "The first repatriation is important - we can learn from the experiences, good or bad," he said.

MYANMAR SETS UP CAMPS

Bangladesh officials said they would begin the process this month by sharing with Myanmar authorities a list of 100,000 Rohingya, picked at random from among registered refugees.

Haque said Myanmar officials would vet the names against their records of residents before the August exodus, and those approved would then be asked if they wanted to go back.

Refugees without documents would be asked to identify streets, villages and other landmarks near their former homes as proof of their right to return, said Haque.

A Myanmar agency set up to oversee repatriation said in a statement on Thursday that two temporary "repatriation and assessment camps" and one other site to accommodate returnees had been set up.

Myint Kyaing, permanent secretary at Myanmar's Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population, told Reuters earlier this month Myanmar would be ready to begin processing least 150 people a day through each of the two camps by Jan. 23.

As well as checking their credentials as residents of Myanmar, he said, authorities would check returnees against lists of suspected "terrorists".

Myint Kyaing declined to comment on how long the repatriation would take but conceded the process after the 1992 agreement had taken more than 10 years.

United Nations agencies working in the camps clustered around Cox's Bazar, in southeastern Bangladesh, have voiced scepticism about the resettlement plans.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration said their offers to help with the process have not been taken up by the two countries.

"Further measures are needed to ensure safe, voluntary and sustainable repatriation of refugees to their places of origin and to address the underlying root causes of the crisis," said Caroline Gluck, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Cox's Bazar.

The UNHCR says refugees it has surveyed want guarantees that international agencies will be involved in overseeing the process and more information about the security situation in their home areas.

WHO WILL GO? WHO WILL PAY?

While many Rohingya say they want to go back to Myanmar, most of the more than a dozen who spoke to Reuters said they were scared to do so now.

"I am not going back. No one's going back," said Hafizulla, a 37-year-old Rohingya man. "We are scared to go back without any U.N. intervention. They can accuse us later, they can arrest us. They may accuse us of helping the militants."

The military offensive the refugees fled, which was prompted by Rohingya insurgent attacks on police and army posts, has been described by the United States and U.N. as ethnic cleansing. Myanmar rejects that, saying troops did not target civilians.

"You can have all the agreements in the world, and set up all the reception centres and everything, but it won't make a difference unless the conditions in Myanmar are such that people feel confident that they can go back and live in peace, and have equal rights," said a Western diplomat in Dhaka.

The second Bangladesh official, Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner Mohammed Abul Kalam, said the "Rohingyas' reluctance to go back" was an issue that needed to be addressed.

He said the repatriation process would cost "millions of dollars" but funding details had not yet been agreed and were not expected to be discussed at Monday's meeting.

Japan, one of Myanmar's biggest aid donors, said on Friday it was giving an emergency grant of around $3 million to help with the return of the Rohingya.

NEW DELHI -- Four former senior Indian judges on Sunday released a letter in support of a group of Supreme Court judges who on Friday openly criticised the way the top court was functioning.

The retired judges — including a former Supreme Court judge and a chief justice of the Delhi High Court — confirmed they had issued an open letter to the Chief Justice of India after four Supreme Court judges held a press conference on Friday in which one of them warned that the nation's democracy was under threat because of the way the top court was being run.

The four sitting judges of the Supreme Court had criticised distribution of cases to judges and raised concerns about judicial appointments in the nation's highest court under Chief Justice Dipak Misra.

Misra has not responded to their allegations.

"We agree with the four judges that though the chief justice of India is the master of roster and can designate benches for allocation of work, this does not mean that it can be done in an arbitrary manner such that sensitive and important cases are sent to hand-picked benches of junior judges by the chief justice," the former judges said in the open letter on Sunday.

Reuters was able to confirm that the letter was drafted and signed by four former judges P.B.Sawant, A.P.Shah, K. Chandru and H. Suresh.

Two of the retired judges said it was important to support the group of Supreme Court judges because they had taken the bold step of speaking out publicly to protect the sanctity of the most important institution of India.

Friday's public outburst by judges prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hold an emergency meeting with his law minister on Friday but the government has refused to comment.

The four former judges said in the statement that all rules and norms must be laid down clearly for allocation of cases.

"This must be done immediately to restore public confidence in the judiciary and in the Supreme Court," the former judges said.

Every year, the United Nations (UN) observes December 5 as the International Volunteer Day. The UN estimates that there are over 1 billion volunteers globally, often in their own home countries in efforts that seek to transform their communities. To rightly acknowledge this contribution, the theme for the 2017 International Volunteer Day is "Volunteers Act First. Here. Everywhere", to underscore their role in serving communities affected by natural disasters, armed conflicts, food crises, health emergencies and forced migration.

Volunteerism as a transformative tool

The State of the World's Volunteerism Report (2015) released by UN Volunteer Programme (under the aegis of UNDP) defines volunteerism as "activities undertaken of free will, for the general public good and where monetary reward is not the principal motivating factor." The power of volunteerism lies in its potential to transform not only the communities that the volunteer serves but also themselves in the process.

Closer to home, Kozhikode district in Kerala saw a number of volunteer run community initiatives, enabled by the District administration under the umbrella initiative "Compassionate Kozhikode", launched in 2015. What this programme demonstrated is that age was no bar for volunteering and neither was one's social origins. Volunteers from all walks of life — students, teachers, psychiatrists, architects and social workers — actively contributed to the revamping of the mental health facilities in Kozhikode. A community owned project named "Operation Sulaimani" to tackle hunger with 'dignity', that has till date catered to more than 40,000 beneficiaries, is also entirely volunteer-driven.

A community owned project named "Operation Sulaimani" to tackle hunger with 'dignity', that has till date catered to more than 40,000 beneficiaries, is also entirely volunteer-driven.

What followed in these cases was a 'give and take' relationship between the volunteers and the communities, with an unprecedented emotional investment by the volunteers, reiterating the view that volunteerism is ultimately an extension of human relationships. In our ever changing, fast-paced, digitalized lives where quality of real-time human interactions is deteriorating, volunteering presents an opportunity to delve deeper into motives beyond money and more importantly, to create and nurture compassionate communities.

In our ever changing, fast-paced, digitalized lives where quality of real-time human interactions is deteriorating, volunteering presents an opportunity to delve deeper into motives beyond money...

Conflict resolution and community ownership

Compassion - to be distinguished from charity or benevolence - can also be an effective administrative tool for resolution of conflicts, be it at the local, national, regional or the global level. Many conflicts often stem from insecurities and anxieties, fueled by a lack of empathy. In such contexts, actively involving children and the youth to work in an area affected by communal riots or enabling them to spend time at an old age home can gradually alter perspectives and go beyond the narrow divides set by class, caste or religion.

In Kozhikode, another spillover effect of the volunteer-run initiatives was a greater sense of ownership and solidarity among the community members. For instance, the initiative "Manichitrathoonu" involved cleaning up of public spaces like streets, walls, bus stops etc and decorating them with paintings, which saw a great turnout of volunteers - both local citizens from different age groups and even international tourists. The increased sense of ownership resulted in local citizens actively thwarting miscreants from vandalizing the cleaned up areas. Unlike in a conventional top-down model where ownership is enforced through rule books and fines, this participatory approach led to growing civic sense and buy-in of the idea.

The increased sense of ownership resulted in local citizens actively thwarting miscreants from vandalizing the cleaned up areas.

Getting them on board

The initiation for volunteers can be ideally done through informal gatherings that include "colorful and fun" activities such as painting public spaces. This slowly sets the ground for them to get involved in more formalized modes of engagement such as working with old age groups, mental health patients or the differently abled.

To attract and sustain the interest and enthusiasm of volunteers, adopting innovative ways of engagement is crucial. Technology in this regard is a great enabler. An example of a good attempt in this regard has been the 'DigiSevak' project, an online volunteering platform run by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology which aims to connect and match various government departments with the skills and interests of volunteers registered on the same. Also, the government should be willing to move away from traditional approaches of citizen engagement to more informal platforms such as social media, where hierarchies are sublimated.

The government should be willing to move away from traditional approaches of citizen engagement to more informal platforms such as social media, where hierarchies are sublimated.

Volunteerism and governance: Possibilities for India

The State of the World's Volunteerism Report (2015) of the UN themed "transforming governance" illustrated through national and local case studies from countries such as Kenya, Lebanon, Brazil and Bangladesh, the role played by volunteers in contributing to the 'good governance' agenda by improving participation, accountability and responsiveness.

In India, the idea of volunteerism, often translates into the idea of "Seva" (selfless service), practiced in different religious denominations. But volunteerism also transcends religious boundaries. Formal institutions that exalt volunteerism too exist in India.

But volunteerism also transcends religious boundaries. Formal institutions that exalt volunteerism too exist in India.

The legacy of National Service Scheme (NSS) dates back to 1969 as one of the oldest government-sponsored volunteer initiatives, with offshoots in schools and universities across the country. However, there is a need to mainstream such disparate initiatives to ensure that they don't limit their scope to specific religious groups or student run clubs but involve each and every citizen. In that sense, the idea of volunteerism as a culture still needs to be inculcated into the Indian ethos.

This presents a great opportunity for the Indian government to tap into the massive reserve of human resources for nation-building. For instance, with over a population of 1.3 billion, India can tap the potential of its working age population, say over 50 billion people, who can contribute an hour weekly, to locally and nationally relevant projects.

With over a population of 1.3 billion, India can tap the potential of its working age population, say over 50 billion people, who can contribute an hour weekly, to locally and nationally relevant projects.

A national volunteer framework and legislation would be a right step in this direction. This would act as a guideline for policy makers and implementing entities at the district and local levels – government departments, schools, universities - to adapt it to their respective contexts for mobilizing volunteer participation. This can also bring in more legitimacy to the exercise and serve as an incentive for implementing entities at the district and local levels to encourage volunteer-led initiatives.

This partnership driven model can be premised on multi-stakeholder alliances with academia, NGOs, international organizations such as the UN and other actors to understand the needs and priorities in different areas – be it disaster management, education, primary health etc and match it with the relevant skill sets of a national pool of volunteers.

Ultimately, outside any formal structures and frameworks, the litmus test to embrace volunteerism should be compassion, which underscores the evolution of an individual, leading to the creation of more compassionate communities.

Also on HuffPost India:

(The opinions expressed in this post are the personal views of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of HuffPost India. Any omissions or errors are the author's and HuffPost India does not assume any liability or responsibility for them.)

Bigg Boss S11 is about to get over. With it will also end a hundred days long ritual to diligently sit in front of the television, which otherwise looks like a dumb idiot box, for a one-hour daily dose of magic potion. The show has not just been a television series for us -- the Bigg Boss fans -- but also an integral part of the way we have been leading our lives three months in a year in the last decade. Will we ever trade it for a season of GOT or Quantico? Bigg No! There hasn't and won't ever be anything bigger than the Bigg B.

Well, if you have found this as a foolish and silly write-up on a show that doesn't even deserve a spew, I won't be amazed. That is what more than half the people I meet think of it and worse still, think of me just because I love watching Bigg Boss.

Anyone who ardently follows this reality show is looked upon like a lost Martian on a planet of the intellectuals. While the silly looking Martian would be happily enjoying his/her quarterly escapade into the world of a virtual reality, the intellectuals would be busy judging them - how classless, distasteful, dramatic slaves of reality television they are! Must be the people who fight, catcall, bitch around and gossip in their real life too! How do they even stand so much of noise and cacophony day after day?

They unashamedly put us under scanner of their sophisticated mind which is funnily conditioned to qualify the worthiness of a person by the kind of television serial he watches.

I have also found people who have unapologetically come up to me and advised that becoming a BB fan would either get me mentally depressed, frustrated with life or invoke in me criminal behaviour.

In fact, I have also found people who have unapologetically come up to me and advised that becoming a BB fan would either get me mentally depressed, frustrated with life or invoke in me criminal behaviour. Bingo! How smartly the Bigg Boss haters have claimed their right to read our minds and make a negative personality profile of those who follow a show they think is full of drama, losers and controversies. So much for just watching a TV show that is scripted for fun! Am I not bemused?

Frankly speaking, it is nothing new to the BB fans. Our brains have got rewired to get judged and nudged, a small cost we pay for watching a show which is actually full of entertainment. We have learnt to pass off their cold stares with a pinch of salt and no hoots, a lesson we have learnt from the house inmates, season after season.

As a people's manager working in Corporate Human Resource for over a decade, the show has been perfect entertainment to me. Despite the accusations of being scripted, the plot never fails to bring forth finer nuances of human behaviour. From conflict to negotiation, sustaining competitive advantage to team building, human psychology to behaviour dynamics, Bigg Boss is like an open case study for playful management students.

I bet an ardent viewer would not only play the reality game along with the inmates, but also be able to analyse, predict, graphically represent and even make statistical scatter plots of the series.

I bet an ardent viewer would not only play the reality game along with the inmates, but also be able to analyse, predict, graphically represent and even make statistical scatter plots of the series. Almost like a hooking video simulation! For every one person who thinks of BB as a useless investment of time, there would be someone who would be using it for perfecting mind games. The balance never fails!

Besides, it is funnily impressive to see a reflection of oneself in inmates of the Bigg Boss house, emoting our secret frustrations and making tough choices in difficult circumstances. Where else does one get three months of interesting content to keep discussing about, anywhere anytime?

There is a strange magnetic attraction between BB fans who manage to spot their fraternity even in a crowd of hundreds. Even on Twitter too, which is flooded with teams pitching in their favourites or trolling the closest rivals under myriad hashtags.

When one BB fan happens to meet another in a common friend's party, nothing would stop them from chatting about who is whose favourite or who gets eliminated from the house next?

So when one BB fan happens to meet another in a common friend's party, nothing would stop them from chatting about who is whose favourite or who gets eliminated from the house next? Don't find it funny if you catch them ditching the party fun to vote for their contenders instead. Try interrupting and be prepared for a show inspired real drama!

Even worse would be asking a BB fan to skip the one-hour slot for some personal obligation, especially on the weekend, when the arbitrator Mr. Khan arrives in his regular swag to catch the inmates off guard and do some interesting moral policing. If it was not for following up on Voot, weekend for three months would be staying put at home glued to the TV.

Nevertheless, there is indeed something about the show that has pulled people into two extreme poles – those who love it to the hilt and those who hate it to wrath. For past eleven years, the demarcation has only become stronger.

While I am about to get into another dooming spell of nine months on television until the next season of Bigg Boss arrives with fanfare, the intellectuals take a sigh of relief from the uselessly created hullabaloo.

Those who still blame us for our tasteless choice of reality TV show, can't help but wind it up by saying, "Do whatever you wanna do, man. Just don't trouble us."

(The opinions expressed in this post are the personal views of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of HuffPost India. Any omissions or errors are the author's and HuffPost India does not assume any liability or responsibility for them.)

The son of a judge who died in December 2014 while hearing a case in which Amit Shah, the president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was an accused, said his father's death did not occur under suspicious circumstances. At a press conference on Sunday, Anuj Loya, the young son of late Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) judge Brijmohan Loya, said he had no "doubts about the way he (Loya) died" and requested media to leave his family alone.

Shah, who was accused of ordering the extrajudicial killings of gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife and his friend, was acquitted of all three murders on 30 December, 2014, due to lack of evidence.

"I had an emotional turmoil, hence I had suspicions about his death. But now we don't have any doubts about the way he died," Anuj Loya told reporters. Loya, 48, died of a cardiac arrest while attending a wedding in Nagpur on 1 December, 2014, days before Shah was given a clean chit.

"Earlier my grandfather and aunt had some doubts about his death, which they shared. But now neither of them have any doubts," PTI quoted Anuj as saying. "We faced some pressure from politicians and NGOs. We don't want to name anyone, but please excuse my family from continuously asking about my father's death," the 21-year-old law student said.

He was accompanied byadvocate Ameet Naik, cousin Pratik Bhandari, and family friend and former Mumbai district judge KB Katke.

"We approached advocate Ameet Naik as we wanted to brief the media," Anuj said, adding that the Loyas have accepted "that the (judge's) death was due to heart attack", reported Times of India.

However, Shrinivas Loya, the 81-year-old paternal uncle of judge Loya, told The Caravan magazine that Anuj was "too young" and likely "under pressure", pressing that an inquiry be conducted into the death of the judge.

"If you ask me as a citizen, not as a relative. My view as a citizen is the inquiry initiated in the Supreme Court has to proceed. This is my personal view as a citizen," he told the magazine.

At an unprecedented press conference in the national capital, four sitting judges of the Supreme Court broke rank with the sitting Chief Justice of India, and raised concerns about the "administration" of the apex court. They criticized the way judicial appointments were handled and expressed reservations about distribution of important cases. Justice Jasti Chelameswar, one of the four judges who addressed the press, warned that the nation's democracy was under threat.

Following the public outburst by Justice Chelameswar, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice Madan Lokur, four former senior judges on Sunday released a letter in support

"We agree with the four judges that though the chief justice of India is the master of roster and can designate benches for allocation of work, this does not mean that it can be done in an arbitrary manner such that sensitive and important cases are sent to hand-picked benches of junior judges by the chief justice," the former judges said in the open letter.

Prime Minister Modi held an emergency meeting with his law minister following the press conference but the government has refused to comment, reported Reuters.

A teenager from Haryana's Kurukshetra district was allegedly raped, brutalized and murdered, with foreign objects inserted into her private parts, The Times of India reported today. Her semi-naked body was recovered from a water channel in Jind district on Saturday evening.

The deceased, the daughter of a tailor, went missing from her village in Kurukshetra on 9 January.

S.K. Dattarwal, head of the forensics department in the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS), Rohtak, where the autopsy was conducted, told TOI, "In all, her body had 19 injuries — largely on face, head, chest and hands. Her lungs were ruptured, suggesting someone might have sat on her chest."

"At the same time, water was found from her body. Her body parts were badly damaged, suggesting both unnatural act and gang rape. There were internal injuries as well, suggesting the assailants had inserted a foreign object," he said, adding that "the girl was subjected to immense brutality."

The Hindustan Times reported that a Class 12 student is the prime suspect in the horrific crime.

"The police have detained some people suspecting their involvement but the main accused is still at large. We are conducting raids to arrest him," Superintendent of Police in Kurukshetra, Abhishek Garg, told HT.

Dattarwal told HT, "The autopsy suggests this was an act of frustration. All the damage to her private parts seems to have been done after she was drowned and murdered. This was the work of more than one person who failed to sexually assault the victim while she was alive."

The father of the deceased told reporters, "My daughter was killed brutally, I want justice for her. I cannot fight a long battle for justice but I appeal to the police to send her criminals behind the bars."

The father has also accused the local police of failing to act in time. "Why did the police take three days to find our daughter?" he said.

In another horrific case of sexual violence in Haryana, the body of a Dalit girl was recovered in Urlana village of Panipat district on Sunday morning. The 11-year-old was allegedly murdered and then gang-raped by her two neighbors - both in their twenties.

On Friday evening in Uttar Pradesh, the mutilated body of a teenager from Ghaziabad was recovered from a sugarcane field the neighboring district of Meerut.

The daughter of a temple priest was allegedly kidnapped, gang-raped, tortured and murdered.