It is not every day that we have more than 60 million tonnes of foodgrain in our granaries. It must be an achievement, considering we were living literally from ship to mouth even in the 1960s. Unfortunately, what could have been a matter of pride has Turned out to be a national shame, that too the second time in this decade (the first was in 2001). As Karl Marx said,...

The fall of Ram Babu Kateliya, 60-year-old farmer from Kateliya village of Mathura district, was as fast as his meteoric rise within the past ten days. General Secretary of Kisan Sangharsh Samiti, an apolitical organisation, Kateliya shot into limelight after his arrest in Tappal tehsil of Aligarh while leading a farmers' agitation demanding high compensation for farmers whose land has been acquired for construction of a township. Three villagers lost...

Does political corruption in India take place because there are always some civil servants who are willing to collaborate in it? Or, is the lure of post-retirement assignments a major reason for spinelessness of the senior civil servants? The affirmative answer to these questions has come from none other than bureaucrats themselves. Recently, they made these facts and many others -- usually, a subject of whisper in corridors of power...

Faced with protests by farmers demanding higher compensation for land acquired for a township along the Taj Expressway, the Mayawati government on Tuesday decided to hike the price offered to them by 20 per cent at Rs 570 per square metre. A team of top state officials led by state cabinet secretary Sashankh Sekhar Singh and some senior ministers of the Mayawati government held parleys with farmer leaderRam Babu Kateria...

The 2010 Seeds Bill that has been introduced in Parliament does address some of the major concerns in the aborted 2004 version, but strangely a number of important correctives – on regulation, consistency and punishment – that had been incorporated in the 2008 version (which lapsed in 2009) have now been modified or dropped altogether. What forces are pushing the government to act against the interests of India’s farmers? The third...