In a quiet coup of sorts, Maoists have taken control of panchayats in about 30 blocks of Malkangiri and Koraput districts in the ongoing panchayat elections in Orissa. All their nominees have been elected unopposed after the Maoists warned local people against nominating any other candidate. Close to 2,500 members of these panchayats have also been elected unopposed. Sources said at least 32 heads of panchayats (sarpanches) have known Maoist...

The Supreme Court on Wednesday started hearing the debate on legality of decriminalising same sex behaviour in private among consenting adults by asking contestants whether the “order of nature” changes with time. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions challenging a Delhi High Court judgment on July 2, 2009, which ruled that sexual intercourse among adults of the same sex is not a criminal offence under Section 377 of the...

The huge expenditure on the food bill, with the attendant leakages, could well make fiscal recovery impossible In the first part of this article, we have estimated the actual cost of implementing the food security bill in its current form. In this part, we now examine the fiscal sustainability of the same. The current state of the revenue and expenditure trends of the Central government (refer table) show that while revenue...

Odisha village gets pattas after nearly half a century. Land reform programmes get jumpstart They say home is where the heart is, but that’s not always true. Ask Arakhita Pradhan, resident of Chilipoi village in Odisha’s Ganjam district. On a cold evening some 44 years ago, the authorities forcefully shifted him and his neighbours to a place where no civic amenities existed. Reason: the state had built an irrigation dam that...

There is a rush to cash in on micronutrient deficiency in India through fortification of food Andhra Pradesh Foods, a state government enterprise, is ramping up its fortified food production capacity. It provides ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook foods like upma mix, sweet porridge and khichdi mix, fortified with iron, zinc and other vitamins, to infants and pregnant and lactating women under the Centre’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). The effort to double its...