-Frontine Walmart’s disclosure that it spent huge amounts of money on lobbying in India and the allegation that it entered the retail sector through indirect means highlight the power of global capital in dictating the country’s policies. The world’s largest multi-brand retailer Walmart’s disclosure to the United States Senate that it had spent $25 million (Rs.135 crore) since 2008 on its various lobbying activities, which include enhancing access to the Indian...

-The Hindu Farmers are opting for the real estate option due to poor agricultural conditions Pushed by unsettling agricultural conditions and pulled by lucrative real estate deals, farmers across the famed and fertile Cauvery delta in Tamil Nadu are selling their lands to real estate developers. In Amma Chatram, Marudhanallur, Tirunageswarm, Mathur, and in a host of other villages in Thanjavur and adjacent districts, farmlands are being converted to residential plots at...

-The Business Standard Govt's unbalanced food policy has disastrous results Consider the following discrepancies in the farm sector. The country is now the world’s largest exporter of rice, a crop grown with huge quantities of scarce water and heavily subsidised fertilisers. At the same time, it is the leading importer of pulses, which require very little water to grow and fortify the land with nitrogen to reduce the fertiliser need even...

The total expenditure on central schemes for the poor and on the major subsidies exceeds the states' share of central taxes. These schemes are chronic bad performers due to a culture of immunity in public administration and weakened local governments. Arguing that the poor should be trusted to use these resources better than the state, a radical redirection with substantial direct transfers to individuals and complementary decentralisation to local governments...

-The Hindu Refusal by Dalits to work as agricultural labour and to perform menial duties plus their relative economic improvement have made them the targets of caste violence In the recent violence against the Dalits in Dharmapuri district in Tamil Nadu, about 300 of their houses were burnt down and other properties destroyed by the Vanniars, a numerically strong intermediate caste, sections of whom have been economically stagnant. The immediate cause for...