The NREGS is restricted. The PDS is targeted. Only exploitation is universal. The rotting of lakhs of tonnes of foodgrain in open yards, while shocking, is hardly new or surprising. Remember the rural poor marching on godowns in Andhra Pradesh in 2001 in similar circumstances? The Supreme Court was quite right in jolting the Union government. “In a country where admittedly people are starving, it is a crime to waste even...

After being cornered by the Opposition political parties on several occasions for the past two years over the cases of recurring farmers' suicides in Orissa, the state government has finally come out with a report on the matter. According to the report released in the state legislative assembly by Damodar Rout, the minister for agriculture and cooperation, 46 farmers have committed suicide in 2009-10 and in 2010-11 so far due to...

"India lives in several centuries at the same time. Somehow we manage to progress and regress simultaneously." Arundhati Roy Controversies, protests and violence have marred land acquisition for projects in India. Protests against acquiring agricultural land, inappropriate compensation or environmental impact have been the main reasons for these protests. In most cases, the protests are by farmers who are hardly compensated after their fertile agricultural land is taken over in for...

Orissa, which has faced natural calamities 125 times in the past 107 years, will soon be ready with another 164 multi-purpose cyclone shelters and 50 flood shelters in the vulnerable coastal belt. Reviewing the progress, chief minister Naveen Patnaik today directed the officials to complete construction of all flood shelters by March 2011. He also asked departments to expedite construction of cyclone shelters, official sources here said. Orissa has been identified...

BERHAMPUR: Justice seems to be eluding a 78-year-old woman, Padma Maharana, of Komand village under Rabha police station in Ganjam district. The senior citizen has become a destitute in her own land. She was ‘driven’ away from her village in 2002 by a group of miscreants who eyed her wealth. Having no way-out she moved to Bhubaneswar to continue her legal battle against the miscreants. The miscreants had also allegedly looted her...