Janardhana Reddy insists he is not a king. No, no, no, he protested, as a servant trotted across the courtyard to deliver a cup of cooled water. Men with machine guns stood outside. An architect waited to discuss the new mansion, while another man hovered nearby, sitting in the grass. “He’s the state minister of health,” Mr. Reddy said of the man in the grass, who stood up, made a little...

In the summer of 2006, I travelled with a group of scholars and writers through the district of Dantewada, then (as now) the epicentre of the conflict between the Indian State and Maoist rebels. Writing about my experiences in a four-part series published in The Telegraph, I predicted that the conflict would intensify, because the Maoists would not give up their commitment to armed struggle, while the government would not...

Mangalore air crash highlights two petitions highlighting safety violations in the Mangalore tabletop airport, dismissed by the Karnataka High Court in ’92 and by the Supreme Court in ’02 Apex court dismisses petition against mining in Niyamgiri hills in 2008; now a global focus point The same year, the apex court dismisses PIL against the building of the Commonwealth Games village on the Yamuna riverbed. Why has the UPA government, which loses no...

Since she could remember, labourer Rama Nag (34) didn't know what her ration card meant, that as one of India's nearly 400 million officially poor people, she was entitled to subsidised foodgrain. Until 2006, here in the heart of impoverished tribal India, on the edge of the sprawling forests of Bastar and the Maoist zone of Dantewada, Nag and her family of four survived on rice and whatever they could...

A RESEARCHER WORKING on the State of Panchayats Report (SOPR) 2008-09 met Mahangu Madiya in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district, a dangerous place for gathering data. Madiya’s story was startling. In January, he was given Rs 55 lakh compensation for his land, but the amount is sitting in his bank account. He does not even own a mobile phone. “I am concerned with farming. My land is important to me. What will I...