National Infrastructure Equity Audit conducted in 125 gram panchayats in five States There is a continued prevalence of deep-rooted caste-based inequity in the contribution and availability of infrastructure and, hence, of the accessibility of services and entitlements, a report has suggested. The Scheduled Castes (SC), the Scheduled Tribes (ST) and minorities do not have access to functional infrastructure facilities as they are ‘merely situated in the general or backward classes habitations,' according...

Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress today expressed “serious objections” to the proposed bill against communal violence, saying the current draft undermined the country’s federal structure. The BJP said it would intensify its campaign against the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Regulations) Bill, 2011, emboldened by the objections of other non-Congress parties, although none backed its pet “bias against Hindus” line. ( ) Mamata did not attend the National...

PRONAB MONDAL TRAVELLED TO THE DENSE FORESTS OF JUNGLE MAHAL IN WEST MIDNAPORE TO FIND OUT HOW MAOISTS ARE USING THE RESPITE FROM POLICE OPERATIONS NOT ONLY TO REGROUP BUT ALSO TO LAUNCH DEVELOPMENT WORK TO WIN OVER THE IMPOVERISHED VILLAGERS Scene I: A small, one-room building with an asbestos roof in the middle of a forest in West Midnapore’s Jungle Mahal. Inside, a man sits at a table with a...

Anna Hazare’s fast is over, but the conjuncture of which that fast was an episode is not: Hazare’s own movement, or other similar movements, are bound to recur in the coming months. The question naturally arises: what are these movements all about? And to start with: what was Hazare’s own movement all about? It was certainly not about “corruption” in any definable sense. That word meant different things to the...

The global 'farmland grab' in Ethiopia and the rest of Africa has become competitive, with companies from Asia, including India and China, joining it. AN extraordinary new process has been at work in the past few years: the aggressive entry of Indian corporations into the markets for agricultural land in Africa. At one level, this process is simply following the hoary old tradition in global capitalism of firms (often supported...