Despite tall claims, the NREGA programme is just a dud as most other “in the name of the poor” expenditures - and as much of a dud as predicted by Rajiv Gandhi A decade or so ago, Booker prize winner Arundhati Roy claimed that the building of dams in India had displaced more than 50 million people. This implied that one out of every three rural Indians had had to move...

Maharashtra’s image as a progressive state has taken a beating with recent figures rating it third amongst major states, after Uttar Pradesh and Bihar as regards the population below poverty line. An economic Survey released by the state government said the poverty estimates provided by the Planning Commission reveal poverty ratio in the state is 30.7%, 3.2% more than the all-India (27.5%) figure. “Maharashtra had 3.17 crore persons below poverty line after...

Ambitious planting programmes in Asia and the United States have helped slow the global rate of deforestation but farmers are still cutting trees to clear land at an alarmingly high rate, a U.N. Survey released on Thursday shows. Forests absorb and store greenhouse gases so deforestation can exacerbate mean the effects of climate change, said Mette Loyche Wilkie, coordinator of the assessment by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Eduardo Rojas,...

The Supreme Court has instructed several mining enterprises based in Anantpur district of Andhra Pradesh — including one, the Obulapuram Mining Company, that is associated with the powerful Reddy brothers of Karnataka — to stop operations while investigations are conducted into whether they are mining in areas which they aren’t supposed to touch. This is a welcome check on the Reddy brothers, who must have begun to think of themselves...

Maheshwar (Khargone district, M.P.): “ Hamaari ladaai vikas se nahi, visthaapan se hai [Our fight is against displacement, not development],” Radhe Shyam Patidar of Pathrad village says, with a hint of aggression visible in the wrinkles around his ageing eyes. “We are only demanding proper rehabilitation for our village and we will not back down on that,” he says. Interestingly, whether the Maheshwar dam project, India's first privately financed hydroelectric project,...