Media is business, journalism is not. With these stinging words, developmental journalist and Magsaysay Award winner for journalism P Sainath grabbed the attention of the 250 media students attending Mumbai's Sophia Polytechnic's annual lecture, 'Catalyst for Change', on Thursday. The topic was 'Paid News', on which there cannot be a more well-informed speaker than Sainath who has consistently highlighted the menace in his writings. Sainath said since 2008, some 3000 journalists...

Twenty five years after the beginning of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the movement buzzes with inputs from activists and students. But, dogged by many limitations, is there a positive end in sight?An increased and meaningful interface between tribals and non-tribals came about...The air enveloping the ghats at Koteshwar is heavy with spirituality. Devotees, tourists and other visitors throng the place every day to pray at the several temples around the...

The Niira Radia tapes have firmly put  the spotlight of adverse attention on politics and the media. But surprisingly, the loudest voice of protest—which is also a claim of innocence and a warning that the focus on the mud-smeared keeps attention off the real beasts in the 2G story—has come from India Inc. Ratan Tata, head of the Tata group and Radia’s foremost client, calls the leaked tapes “unauthorised” and...

A widening corruption scandal that has touched India’s prime minister sent the country’s stock markets down sharply on Friday and threatened to tarnish the country’s image as a rising economic power. Setting off the turmoil was a report from the country’s auditor earlier this week that about $40 billion in wireless spectrum license fees had been squandered by the government’s telecommunications and information technology minister. On Thursday, India’s Supreme Court criticized...

Mahitosh Sarkar came here from his distant village in West Bengal 12 years ago looking for a better life, and he found it. He abandoned the penniless existence of a subsistence fisherman to become a big-city vegetable seller. His wife found work as a maid. Their four children went to school. Their tiny household, a grim but weather-tight room in a dilapidated tenement, had a color TV and a satellite...