If there is one sector that is visibly the intersection of backroom politics, crony capitalism and serious threats to India’s internal security, it is mining. The business of resource extraction has always had its own peculiar economic logic: modern, yet dependent on the land; high-tech, yet somehow, indefinably, with feudal overtones. These anomalies have traditionally been recognised by economists, who categorise mining as the only “industrial” component of the primary,...

“This is a country on the make.” The speaker was a young assistant to one of India’s rising political stars. And from his perspective, it did look that way. We were sitting in the lobby restaurant of New Delhi’s luxurious Taj Mahal Hotel. That evening, the Taj was not only the place for a government reception following Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s decisive re-election victory, but it was also the scene...

“Imperative to prepare a dependable list for West Bengal”  KOLKATA: The inclusion of names in West Bengal’s Below Poverty Line (BPL) list should not be determined by political considerations but by economic benchmark, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here on Wednesday. “The list must be prepared on the basis of one’s economic status and poverty and not on the basis of political considerations,” Mr. Bhattacharjee told a workshop organised by the...

The recession is a promising moment to expand NREGA with greater emphasis on building social capital in a big way.  Soon after assuming office, the first UPA government took an impressive step for the alleviation of rural poverty by launching the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It was, indeed, a wise move to insulate the programme from the vicissitudes of electoral politics by enacting the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act...

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has brought out an excellent compilation titled Climate Change, Politics and Facts. The government is planning legislation with targets for greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps to bolster this, the Ministry of Environment and Forests has published results of five studies - NCAER/Jadavpur, TERI/MoEF, IRADE, TERI/Poznan and McKinsey - and findings have been contrasted and collated by CSE. As per all these models except for TERI/Poznan,...