The Truth About Ourselves
The human genome sequence has been completed and shows some surprising findings. Despite having one-third less genes than estimated, human beings are still very complex. With access to disease genes, medicine and diagnostics will be revolutionised. However, this will also raise ethical questions on cloning and genetic privacy.

Hope In Hell
Four weeks after the earthquake, Gujarat is still coming to terms with the devastation. True grit is emerging from the rubble but it will be some time before lives are rebuilt. INDIA TODAY's teams went out across these death zones, capturing stories which record this renewal.

Simmer Time

Profitable Loss
36 With over 90,000 employees opting for the VRS scheme, PSU banks are set to get over their problem of overstaffing. But is it going to make banks more competitive in this age of automation? Besides, it is also going to cost more than Rs 7,500 crore and will deprive the banks of skilled workers.

Paper Money

Spreading Terror
The attacks on Delhi's Red Fort,
the Srinagar airport and the city's police control room show the Lashkar-e-Toiba is increasingly catching the Indian security forces unawares-and emerging as the most daring terrorist group from Pakistan.

Face Off
It's David Vs Goliath as India play an Australian demolition squad at home. What makes the Aussies tick and how can India take them on?

Cricketwatch:
Ashley Mallett

STATES: GUJARAT

RIDDHI DANGAR, MOTI BARAR
Flower Child

A quiet four-year-old orphan symbolises the spirit of survival for an entire village

She has 14 stitches across her scalp. She is four. And she is the symbol of hope for an entire village. Riddhi Deodan Dangar crawled out of the rubble, bleeding, screaming-and alive. She haltingly recounts the day, gently urged by grandmother Hiruben. "The house started to move, then it became like the night. And then I remember nothing."

The village does. A tiny dot of 1,500 people and 265 houses near Morvi in the heart of Saurashtra, Moti Barar records a relatively modest five dead, all houses destroyed, Rs 1,500 of government dole per family, 10 kg of potatoes, five litres of kerosene and some handouts dropped from the trucks speeding relief to Kutch. They also remember the day last week when the motorcade of Keshubhai Patel, chief minister of Gujarat, sped past a roadblock of folded hands without stopping. "We have kept away from God and politicians these past 17 days," wisecracks Dinesh Dangar, the village wit. "For us, Keshubhai is like a 90-kg stone." Then his eyes mist over. "This little flower of an orphan girl shows us the way, makes us smile at life. If a child can take such pain, we can, too."

For starters, they are clearing debris off their homes, painstakingly separating stored grain from mud, realising the urgency of some form of solid shelter before rains lash the area. The elders even indulge in gallows humour: "If we had died, you would have got a lakh rupees." And once in a while, they stop by to look at the girl playing quietly with other children.

Next, they plan to take Riddhi to Ravi the bull. He sits near a field of empty blue relief tents, rooted to the spot since the quake. If anybody can move Ravi, they figure, Riddhi can.

-Sudeep Chakravarti

MetroScape
Delhi On My Mind...
I'm very flattered to have this act of 'piracy' take place," laughs William Dalrymple, as extracts from his engrossing travelogue City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi were interpreted by photographer Agnes Montanari and art historian Nathalie Trouveroy in an exhibition.
more...

Looking Glass

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Delhi: Exhibition

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"I was very much against the idea of India," says William Dalrymple, author, The City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi. In conversation with INDIA TODAY's Sonia Faleiro, he talks about his old girlfriend, Delhi and his "enormously exciting" next book, The White Moghuls in Interviews.