-The Business Standard   The government’s cup of woes with regard to the much-hyped Posco project seem to be brimming over. Even as the anti-Posco activists have forced the Jagatsinghpur district administration to stop land acquisition for the project at Gobindpur and Dhinkia, the project supporters, who had assisted the officials in an almost trouble-free land acquisition in Gadakujang and Nuagaon panchayats, are now peeved with the administration for non-fulfilment of...

More than five years have passed since the world’s largest employment programme was launched in India. The scale of employment generated was not the only reason that this is a path breaking legislation. The MGNREGA is the first national law to establish rights in the development sector. It is demand based, and not constrained by arbitrary and restrictive selections like the Below Poverty Line (BPL) list. Any person living in a...

I must begin with two disclaimers. The Singur land development and rehabilitation bill, 2011 was moved in the West Bengal legislative assembly last Tuesday by the industries minister with whom I happen to share a name. However, I believe he does not share any of the opinions or sentiments expressed below. Second, I was a persistent critic of the Left Front government when it was in power and what I...

Punjab's attempts at diversification from water-guzzling paddy hasn’t made much headway. With looming desertification and reverse flow from water-logged blocks having brackish groundwater to areas where the groundwater table is fast depleting, the need to diversify has been underlined since long. Even in a lean monsoon year (2009), there was a record harvest of the crop. Its acreage did not fall even last year when a major part of the paddy...

A Tamil economist, the late S. Guhan, used to say that Delhi was a capital in search of a country. I was reminded of that remark during the fortnight of May 29 to June 11, 2011. In that fortnight, if one watched the ‘national’ channels or read the ‘national’ newspapers, one would think all of India was involved in one way or the other with the ideas and practices of...