(Application deadline Friday September 30, 2011) Inclusive Media for Change, a CSDS-based initiative that runs a clearing house of ideas, information and alternatives on India’s rural crises (www.im4change.org), invites applications for media fellowships for journalists in English and Hindi for 2011. The ideal candidates would be willing to spend two to three weeks with rural communities and write series of stories or make radio/ TV programmes on grassroots issues that require...

Long promised by the UPA government, the food security bill will be tabled in parliament in December this year. However, the National Advisory Council (NAC), which drafted the proposal, is tussling with the government over the “dilution and misdirection” of the Bill. The final Bill diverges from the original NAC draft on key issues: adoption of alternatives to the PDS such as cash transfers, the risk of inflation due to...

While the rest of the world is saluting the birth of a miracle - the manifestation of the best of the human spirit in a peaceful movement that is uniting millions of people across religions, geographies and social and economic groups - Arundhati Roy has seized the opportunity to be intellectually irreverent. Sadly, her vituperative dismissal of this powerful human revolution in her piece, ‘I would rather not be Anna' published...

In her pre-Independence Day address, the President of India advocated the need for enhanced transparency and accountability in government, stressing the need for the adoption of rational and practical approaches in addressing these challenges. Her choice of qualifiers is significant, since the need for reform is especially being felt in government contracts, with recent government initiatives such as enacting a formal public procurement law for India, and for laying down...

MFIs in Andhra Pradesh are paying for the sins of their past. Market for new loans has dried up, banks have turned off their spigots while the AP government is content to sit back and watch. It has been eleven months since the Andhra Pradesh government issued an ordinance—later converted into the Andhra Pradesh Micro-Finance Institutions (Regulation of Money Lending) Act—which, the microfinance industry hoped, would be the magic remedy that...