Mumbai sinking
Once again, India's financial capital reels under the rains of the monsoon. City residents are told that the government is too poor to tackle its infrastructure deficit. But not only is that not true,...
View ArticleThe environmental refugees of Brahmapuram
Recently, disaster struck all 53 families of the Chellipadam village in a Kochi suburb, when nearly 25 lorries, all carrying stinking garbage from the city rolled in with heavy police escort and...
View ArticleWill open defecation end by 2012?
The short answer appears to be no. Some 4,959 villages have bagged the Nirmal Gram Puraskar (clean village prize) so far, for having flush toilets in every household and school. But there is a flip...
View ArticleRe-engineering the Comptroller and Auditor General
Public audit of an organisation or individual by a statutory authority is proven to give teeth to enforcement. Why then has India's CAG failed to instill fear in the various government departments and...
View ArticleWomen leaders denounce amendment to panchayat law
The Karnataka state legislature's amendment to the Panchayati Raj law has already attracted severe criticism from civil society. The governor had also expressed his objections. There is now an...
View ArticleGrounded till thirty
The government recently imposed a ban on women under 30 emigrating for domestic work and caregiving. But instead of stopping women who want to migrate, it is likely to put them at greater risk to...
View ArticlePlaying politics with floods
An indifferent political system, trading of charges between state and central governments, and the apathy of the Water Resources Department have together created and compounded the misery of floods in...
View ArticleState governments unwilling to relinquish control
The Supreme Court issued six directives in 2006 on bringing about police reforms in the states to make the police free from political interference and accountable to the citizens. Kathyayini Chamaraj...
View ArticlePaying no heed to groundswell of opinion
A range of criticisms raised at a recent seminar in Mumbai are a sufficient indication of the extent to which SEZs are being pushed as a government policy without any public consultation on their pros...
View ArticleSetting a precedent for trafficking hazardous waste
By every rule in the book, this ship, carrying asbestos waste and radioactive elements, should not be in Indian waters, let alone be beached. And yet, despite well-premised objections, the central...
View ArticleNREGA battling cancerous corruption in Orissa
Rs.500 crores of Orissa's funds for rural employment guarantees for 2006-7 appear to have been siphoned off by the state bureaucracy. This money would have brought 10 lakh poorest families two...
View ArticleRioters against ration dealers
Agitators in West Bengal have squarely accused the ration dealers of manipulating the supplies of wheat and rice for the open market by selling them at higher prices. Many of the ration dealers are...
View ArticleNiyamgiri tribals await apex court verdict
Thousands of miles away from India, the Norwegian Government has recognized what has gone wrong with a global corporation's mining interests in Orissa. But the decision that matters most will be made...
View ArticlePrivatisation in the Krishna basin is recipe for conflict
In September, the Maharashtra Krishna Valley Development Corporation invited expressions of interest from private companies to build the canals for the Nira Deoghar dam on a Build Operate Transfer...
View ArticleLiving under constant threat of eviction
People from several villages in Bihar are opposing the construction of a pair of embankments on the Bagmati river and have stopped work on one of them. Less visible behind their cries is a state...
View ArticleAssam's poorest district moves forward
Conflict-ridden and marked as 'backward', Karbi Anglong is the first district in the North-East and the fourth in the country to have implemented a quality management system in compliance with the ISO...
View ArticleCompensatory afforestation a hoax in M.P.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) carried out a comprehensive performance audit on the diversion of forestland for non-forest purposes in Madhya Pradesh. The result: exposure of significant...
View ArticleCAG report slams Vidarbha waiver package
The Comptroller and Auditor General's audit of relief packages for Vidarbha's farmers finds that they were tardy in implementation, mindless in conceptualisation and "inconsistent with local needs."...
View ArticleModi's secession?
The Gujarat CM has raised a serious issue. But he has also let loose the argument that a well-off state does not now need the Centre or other states. This is the shape of conflicts that will haunt the...
View ArticleCAG indicts SEZ policy
In major finding, the Comptroller and Auditor General reported to Parliament earlier this year that a key objective of the SEZ policy, -- augmenting real exports -- has not only been defeated, but the...
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