-The Hindu Mining companies have received favourable impact assessments even as they do great damage to the environment because regulators are willing to look the other way Last week, world leaders concerned about economic development got together at the International Monetary Fund, and gave a series of most instructive interviews. Our Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, said that his problem was the slowing down of India's economic growth and reduction in government revenues....

-Economic and Political Weekly   Much work remains to be done if the new Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act has to mark a meaningful shift for India's adivasi communities. Chitrangada Choudhury (chitrangada@csds.in) Chitrangada Choudhury (chitrangada@csds.in) is a multimedia journalist and researcher, and currently with the Publics and Policies program at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. Among the worst excesses committed in India's six decade-old democracy, the forcible displacment...

-The Hindu Uttarakhand reiterates that our rulers have contemptuous disregard for the advice of the best scientists and would rather listen to contractors and builders to whom they are beholden for funds In the early 1980s, while doing research on the environmental history of Uttarakhand, I sometimes visited the library of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in Dehradun. Most of the journals in the library dealt with geology and earth sciences,...

-The Economic Times If India is now debating opening the books and operations of political parties to the public, it's because of these six people who pulled strategic levers and applied relentless pressure. Soma Banerjee traces a four-year effort that converted intent to action Balwant Singh Khera, a politician from Hoshiarpur in Punjab, is not a name that will strike a chord in mainstream politics or social discourse today. It might in...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Lifting the cloak of secrecy from sources of funding of political parties and their expenditure the central information commission (CIC) has ruled that they are public authorities who now need to respond to RTI queries within six weeks. Political parties on Monday lost the battle to stay out of RTI purview and keep their donors secret after the commission in a 54-page order said six national...