The collapse of the Dubai dream is not without any implications; it may be an indication that the travails of finance capitalism are not over. GLOBAL capitalism is in a phase in which it must deal with the fruits of the overextension during the previous boom, and there is no doubt that this is going to be painful. The financial crisis in the United States and some other developed countries...

Missing job cards, fudged muster rolls and diversion of NREGS funds through fake bills. What the Rajasthan social audit has revealed is the tip of the iceberg.  Bhilwara-2009 invited a swift and strong backlash — the government backed off realising it had stepped into a quagmire of corruption The battle being fought in the panchayats, streets, offices, and courts of Rajasthan is not just about social audit To understand why civil society...

After a gap of almost a decade, all the nine major trade unions on Wednesday jointly staged a dharna in front of Parliament to protest against price rise, Job loss, and disinvestment of public sector undertakings. This is the first time that the Congress-led INTUC has joined hands with All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) and CITU, besides HMS and BMS. The All India Bank Employees Association’s agitation also coincided with...

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to interfere with a Gujarat High Court judgment dismissing a petition which challenged land acquisition by the State government for the Tata Motors’ Nano project at Surendranagar. Rejecting the public interest litigation petition filed by the NGO, Rashtriya Kisan Dal represented by H.K. Thaker, Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan asked him: “You don’t want industrialisation of Surendranagar? Gujarat is the second most industrialised State.”...

The road to Khardung La begins in the Indian town of Leh on the northwestern fringe of the Himalayas. Exhaust-spewing army trucks rattle up the side of dry rock, past Buddhist monasteries clinging to the craggy mountainside and alongside small farms barely scraping fertility from the earth. Khardung La, the highest motorable mountain pass in the world, is more than 18,000 ft. above sea level, the air so thin that...