In the long speeches made at the opening ceremony of the CW games, every important individual, department or institution that made a contribution, was acknowledged. Did anyone hear a word about the workers who made these world-class games possible? Maybe it was just a slip or maybe it was not considered necessary. Anyway, the workers were not there for the speeches, having been driven out of the capital just a...

Eliminating hunger from the State seems a distant possibility if the results of the latest survey report ‘Millennium Development Goals - A status report on Orissa’ are any indication. The survey found a high of 43 per cent families in the State don’t have ration card at all. Significantly, it reveals that more than half of the beneficiaries (52 per cent), who avail the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, fail to receive the...

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, since 2003, one Indian farmer has committed suicide every 30 minutes. In 2008, 16,196 farmers took their own lives, bringing the total number of farmer suicides in India between 1997 and 2008 to 199,132. (Significantly, P. Sainath is of the opinion that like all government data, these figures too are unreliable. For when women farmhands kill themselves, their deaths are not enlisted as...

Even as the state government mulls over the compulsory voting bill, farmers in the tribal Dahod district have decided to boycott the local elections over non-payment of wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). There are about 2,223 such farmers in Fatehpura taluka of Dahod district bordering Rajasthan, who have decided to abstain from voting. Incidentally, police investigation continues in the case in which sarpanchs are alleged to have...

The state government has decided to create special training centres for out-of-school children as part of implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act. The Department of Basic Education has already created the detailed proposal for these centres, which has been duly approved by the Centre. These centres will be providing special training to about 95,000 children, aged between 6 to 14 years, who are not enrolled in schools. Retired teachers...