Soon after he exposed how bricks were bought for six times their value for roads that were never built in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Amarnath Pandey was shot near his home. The bullet, which he believes was fired by contractors who were benefiting from the brick scam, clipped his ear and grazed his skull, leaving him in hospital for weeks. Pandey, 56, a doctor from Robertsganj, a sleepy city...

Should the Central government run schools, crèches, pre-schools, dispensaries, employment schemes, the buying and selling of food grains, and build houses, not to speak of selling milk as it does in Delhi? Though the states seem to have taken it as their fate to have schemes on state subjects like education, agriculture and so on tailored for them by the Centre, as if in distrust of the states’ capability to think...

With 1.8 billion people threatened by absolute Water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world’s population facing potential shortages, countries must better protect and manage forests to ensure the provision of clean Water to vulnerable communities, a United Nations-backed forum warned today. “Forests are part of the natural infrastructure of any country and are essential to the Water cycle,” said UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Forestry Department Assistant Director...

The colossal hubris, ignorance and smugness of India’s nuclear czars take one’s breath away. The day Japan’s crisis took a decisive turn for the worse, with an explosion in a third Fukushima reactor and fresh radiation leaks, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) secretary Sreekumar Banerjee declared that the nuclear crisis “was purely a chemical reaction and not a nuclear emergency as described by some section(s) of media”. Nuclear Power Corporation...

Thousands of workers from the state employed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) will protest outside Parliament on March 30. The members,of the NREGA worker union from Punjab, allege widespread corruption in the scheme and poor working conditions. “NREGA was implemented from April 1, 2008. As per rules, job cards should have been made by that time, but even now many workers are running from pillar to...