Judges at India's Supreme Court have made public details about their financial assets and published the information on the court's website. Twenty one judges of the country's highest court presided over by Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan have declared assets owned by them and their spouses. The LANDmark move follows intense public debate about the importance of judicial accountability in India. The decision is likely to lead to some 600 high court...

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,...

Sitting on an iron bench along a busy street, Chaman Lal sticks his fingers into a mug full of a greasy concoction and then applies the dark-red brew to areas where his patients complain of pain. Lal -- who does not have a license to practice medicine, but claims to be a successful bone doctor and traditional healer -- says this potion of 18 herbs is a cure-all. His large signboard,...

DINDIGUL: Tribals from different villages on the Kodaikanal hill on Monday organised a demonstration here on Monday to flay a move to displace them from their LAND by Forest Department officials. They appealed to the government to implement the Forest Rights Act and redraw tribal areas. They alleged that forest officials prevented tribal people from collecting forest produces such as honey and firewood for their survival and foisted cases against...

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 18: Members of tribal communities living in the hills and forests of Malkangiri in Orissa are a jubilant lot these days, as they have finally become owners of LAND that they and their ancestors have been living on for years now. Cultivation being the main source of livelihood for them, possession of these title certificates for forestLAND (pattas) where they have been residing meant much to the Bondas, Koyas...