Much of the daylight robbery in the name of Commonwealth Games has been justified in the name of "National Prestige" and "World class aspirations. Whether all these surreptitious measures will eventually deliver the games is an open question? The Commonwealth is a 'friendly' association of those 72 colonies which were once part of the British Empire and rose to free nationhood - some through protracted struggle and others through negotiation. In...

The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) will probe an allegation that research on genetically modified brinjal initiated five years ago in India had violated a law that sought to protect the country’s genetic resources, NBA sources said. A non-government group in Bangalore has alleged that Indian crop scientists may have violated the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, through research involving local brinjal varieties and foreign technology without appropriate permission from the NBA....

I have been an advisor to The Energy and Resources Institute or Teri, a distinguished visiting fellow there since 1996, except when I was the chairman of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission, the director-general of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, the chairman of the Institute for Social and Economic Change and on boards of management and economic research institutions. This disclaimer is intended to forestall motives being ascribed...

A FEW SLEEPY villages in the hills, about an hour’s drive from Pune, are suddenly buzzing with activity. Lavasa Corporation, a subsidiary of the Hindustan Construction Company (HCC), is spending Rs 140,000 crore to ‘clean out’ these villages (read tribals and marginal farmers) and build a world-class city in its place. Those pushing the project argue that urban India, bursting at its seams, just cannot cope with the large-scale migration from...

Dr U Jaikumaran is breathless with excitement over the phone. “The next five days will be hectic and crucial in our war against hunger. We have to transplant rice on 300 acres in just five days.” Dr Jaikumaran, a professor at the Kerala Agriculture University (KAU), has been building a Food Security Army (FSA) – men and women in green uniforms organised into nine regiments and 24 battalions – who are...