The beneficiaries of the land reforms in West Bengal get pushed out of their land under the new regime. MOGHAI MUNDA is dead. No one is there to mourn him but his distraught parents and his young wife who seems to have lost her power of speech. But it is a significant death, even if it is ignored by the ubiquitous media and, therefore, by the world at large. Like the...

While imposing a ban on mining in Karnataka’s Bellary district in July this year, the Supreme Court had reasoned that the massive environmental damage caused by excessive mining impinges on the constitutional right to life. In neighbouring Goa, the latest state rocked by a mining scandal, the destruction could be on an even larger scale if one compares mining figures and relates these to the areas of the large district and...

-The Hindustan Times   Do these people look well-off to you? The planning commission puts them above poverty line. Basant Kumar, 51  Shopkeeper  Kusumpur Pahari slum,  Vasant Vihar, Delhi Daily expense: Rs 53   Basant Kumar runs a little shop in a slum in Vasant Vihar, home to over two lakh migrant families. He feeds and clothes his wife and three children on his meagre earnings of Rs5,000 a month. He also works odd-jobs, in construction or with...

-The Economic Times   While attention has been riveted on illegal mining in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, thanks to the Supreme Court-ordered probe into the activities of key players, environmental activists and political parties have now turned their gaze to Congresscontrolled Goa. The western coastal state, which has rich deposits of iron ore, has now turned alive with charges of a Rs 8,000-crore mining scam. Goa Chief Minister Digambar Kamat's role, which has...

Opening a new chapter of charges against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, this time for attempting to subvert the judicial process, the noted danseuse and social activist Mallika Sarabhai claimed that the Chief Minister had “bribed” her lawyers to derail her Public Interest Litigation petition before the Supreme Court on the 2002 communal riots in the State. Ms. Sarabhai told a hurriedly convened media conference on Sunday that an affidavit filed...