The first results of Census 2011 put India's population at 1,210 million, indicating a demographic transition. CENSUS 2011 is the 15th one undertaken in India since 1872 and the seventh after the country attained Independence. While there have been stray historical references to population counts of one kind or another in earlier periods over much smaller territories within the territory that constitutes present-day India, the consensus view is that the...
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Time to look at renewable energy by Praful Bidwai
The Jaitapur nuclear power project has drawn blood even before its boundary wall is ready. One person was killed in police firing on Monday, which by all accounts was unnecessary to disperse peaceful protesters. There was arson in Madban, at the site’s centre, which gutted some grass and a part of a tiny makeshift shed belonging to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India. The police went berserk and intruded into...
More »Too many in India by Alaka M Basu
Late last month we received the exciting news that India now has a population of 1.21 billion. This figure generated less discussion than I expected. Maybe it would have been more mind-boggling a few months ago, before all the scams and scandals inured us to the large number of zeros that a billion signifies. Or maybe we were distracted by the other bad news in the census results — the...
More »Everybody loves to fight poverty by Puja Mehra
It is not often that a social security programme the size of Mahatma Gandhi NREGS - New Delhi has spent Rs 40,000 crore on it in 2010/11 alone - faces an existential moment. But, April 2011 will present one such crossroad: the end of the term of a bureaucrat widely acknowledged as the prime mover behind the five-year old scheme. Brought in six years ago to the Centre from her parent...
More »The problem with the Jan Lokpal bill & Hunger Strikes by Sridhar Swaminathan
Anna Hazare and his supporters appear to have come to an agreement with the central government over forming a joint committee to draft the Lokpal bill. We can all agree that corruption in India is a cancer eating away at the very core of the nation. Amidst the frenzied coverage of the hunger strike, and the exclamations of support for Hazare on social networks, there has been scant discussion of...
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