Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can be devastatingly polite: when Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari, who has a commercial interest in agriculture, wrote him a doomsday letter on the dire state of agriculture under UPA rule, Dr. Singh took a month to reply, but when he did, it was to tell the BJP president in excruciating detail about the rise in agricultural production during his tenure in office, which compares...

Renewable energy sources are attractive but in a sense, powerless. Maybe, someday we'll all live in houses with photovoltaic roof tiles but in the real world, a 1GW of solar plant will require 60 square miles of solar panels. When the demand increases, you can fire up more coal, but how will you cause the wind to blow and the sun to shine 24x7? The earth is already so disabled...

In a spate of recent cases in Punjab, information seekers are being turned away by public institutions on the ground that they are not covered under the RTI Act, and are not obliged to share information about their functioning. This despite the fact that almost all these institutions have received financial aid from the state government.   In nearly all such cases, the information seekers had to knock the doors of Information...

In India's western state of Maharashtra, a project supported by Japan International Cooperation Agency is yielding better incomes for farmers and has lured the migrants back to their native villages. PROJECT: RURAL DEVELOPMENT FOR POVERTY REDUCTION PERIOD: 2008-2011 Vishwanath Gangaram Malpote, 28, is in the midst of a robust harvest. As he weeds his rice field, one cannot but help admire his meticulous effort to pluck off the small undergrowth from the standing...

Women and impoverished, illiterate tribals fall prey to Madhya Pradesh’s overweening family planning zeal Birth Control 1951 Family planning as a policy is launched in independent India 1978 Rechristened Family Welfare after the emergency 2000 National Population Policy aims at stable population by 2045 2010 Madhya Pradesh launches targeted family planning NPP says sterilisation should be last resort in family planning. *** When Shyam Lal* walked into a primary health centre at Rewa, a dusty little town in...