A committee appointed by the Union Government has found fault with the entire process of land reforms, particularly the dubious role of officialdom, and called for revisiting the land ceiling limits and that too with retrospective effect. The Committee on State Agrarian Relations and the Unfinished Task in Land Reforms, set up subsequent to the constitution of the National Council for Land Reforms under the Prime Minister, has underlined the relevance...

Beware. If you are poor, go to a municipal or government hospital and seek medical help, chances are that anything can be done to you and if it affects your life or livelihood, there is nothing can be done to secure protection even if it is a case of medical negligence. Because, when you do not pay, you are getting things "not for a consideration" and when that consideration -- fees...

There is an alarming rise in sea level along the Indian coast since 2004, said Shailesh Nayak, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences. Addressing the Indian Science Congress session on ‘Weather, Climate and Environment,’ Nayak said the seal-level rise during 2004-08 along the Indian coast was about 9 mm. The global average sea-level rise from 1961 to 2003 was 1.8 mm per year. The annual rate along the Indian coast was...

A revolution in small farm management is essential to revitalise the country’s agriculture sector, according to noted agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan. Corporate farming would be detrimental to India. Farming was the largest private sector enterprise in the country, and any bid to take away land from the farmer would be counter-productive. But a symbiotic relationship between farmers and industry, resulting in a win-win situation for both, would be good, he...

For 25 years, residents of Tajnagar village near Gurgaon lobbied for a railway station in their village. When their demand was not met, the villagers decided to take matters in their own hands — they pooled in Rs 21 lakh and built a railway station on their own. On Tuesday, the result of their efforts — perhaps the first railway station in the country on which the Railways didn’t have...