About three kilometers from this village, across dirt tracks and open scrubland, there is a settlement of seven mud huts bordered by millet and lentil fields. No electricity or telephone poles run to these huts. There’s not a satellite dish to be seen. In the dry, open land that surrounds the settlement — part of the great Thar Desert that dominates the western part of the state of Rajasthan — black...
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Sankaran, champion of the poor, no more
The untiring champion of the downtrodden and civil rights and former IAS official (1956 batch) of the Andhra Pradesh cadre S R Sankaran passed away on Thursday in Hyderabad. A bachelor, Sanakaran was 76. Though retired in 1992, he never called off his mission to defend the rights of the marginalised sections. Be it government, Maoists, civil rights organisations, Supreme Court or Planning Commission of India, his services were most sought...
More »Are GM crops safe? by Shanthu Shantharam
Finally, India’s science academies have broken their silence and said that GM crops should be an important part of technology mix, which is crucially needed to improve India’s agriculture. The report entitled Inter-Academy Report on GM Crops was submitted to the Union government earlier this week. The combined wisdom of the six academies of sciences in the country was long time coming. It is this kind of scientific advice (voice) that...
More »The mass job guarantee by Aruna Roy & Nachiket Udupa
The sea change that India’s national scheme for rural employment guarantee has accomplished is hard to fathom, its vastness touching the lives or more than 100 million people. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, subsequently renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, or MGNREGA) was a landmark in Indian legislation. Under the act, as of April 2008, for the first time in India’s history, all rural citizens have a legal right...
More »Information as a right by N Bhaskara Rao
Five years after the enactment of the Right to Information Act, awareness of the law, its provisions and potential appears to be very low. Marking the completion of five years, in September 2010, of the enactment of the Right to Information Act, the Central Information Commission (CIC) held the fifth annual convention on “RTI: Challenges and Opportunities,” in New Delhi on September 13 and 14. It was largely a gathering of...
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