Has Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), one of India’s best-known peoples’ movements, run out of steam? Or is it still relevant in its new avatar as a force to reckon with? After all, the NBA has failed to achieve its primary goal of blocking big dams on Narmada, including the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat. The short answer to the question of NBA’s achievement is that it has forced a paradigm...

A panel discussion organised here on Friday by The Editors Guild of India, the Press Association, the Press Club of India and the Indian Women Press Corps on “Radia tapes and journalistic ethics” Turned into a slanging match between journalists and Editor-in Chief of CNN-IBN Rajdeep Sardesai after he pitched in strongly for Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi, saying they had been judged guilty without corroborative evidence. On the panel...

AgriculTural Debt Wavier and Debt Relief Scheme (ADWDRS-2008), which was introduced by the Union Government in 2008 to provide debt relief to farmers, has backfired in Chickballapur district. Under the belief that the Government would come out with a similar debt wavier/relief scheme in the fuTure, a majority of farmers have stopped repaying fresh agriculTural loans they have taken during 2008-09 and 2009-10, subsequent to the implementation of ADWDRS-2008. Thereby, many farmers,...

The Radia tapes reveal the networks and routers, the source codes and malware that bind the corporate and political establishments in India. As squeamish schoolchildren know only too well, dissection is a messy business. Some instinctively Turn away, others become nauseous or scared. Not everyone can stomach first hand the inner workings of an organic system. Ten days ago, a scalpel — in the form of a set of 104 intercepted...

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...