As India was celebrating 63 years of Independence, the village of Tappal around 80 kilometers from Aligarh resembled a battleground - the epicentre of violence between farmers and the police since SaTurday. There were protests in Mathura as well. Hundreds of farmers were demanding higher compensation for their land that has been acquired for the Yamuna expressway, a 165-km road corridor between Noida and Agra. The agitation Turned violent after police allegedly...

Suffering from extreme poverty and male oppression, the women of Darkali village in Madhya Pradesh, India, are now able to feed their families through employment under the MGNREGS. The wages obtained under the Scheme help them augment the family resource base. Jashmabai is working under the punishing sun on an earthen dam in her village of Darkali, in Madhya Pradesh's Alirajpur district, being built under the government-funded Mahatma Gandhi National Rural...

The disastrous effect of the state throwing up its hands and retreating is most starkly visible in agriculTure . Remember: agriculTure involves 70 per cent of the country's population , generates about 56 per cent of national income, 64 per cent of total expendiTure and about one third of total savings. So, any neglect translates into gigantic costs. And the central crisis in agriculTure — production barely matching a depressed...

Independent India's greatest failing must be its inability to feed its people. With 42 per cent of all children malnourished, 56 per cent of women anaemic, and the country ranked 65th out of 84 countries on the Global Hunger Index, the report card of the state on nutrition must have an F. Most disTurbing is the fact that things have got worse over time. In the first half of the...

Governments in India — Centre and states — spend around one per cent of the country's GDP on health. Only five countries — Burundi, Myanmar, Pakistan , Sudan and Cambodia — have a lower figure than this. But private spending on the crucial sector is 4.2 per cent of GDP, among the top 20 countries in the world. Within this private spend, employers pay for about 9 per cent and...