“Wherever there is a lamp, there is darkness below it,” said Bava Bhalekar, a fisherman and local leader in this village roughly a hundred miles south of Mumbai. “The tragedy is that while our village has this project, we ourselves don’t have electricity.” “This project” is the power plant that Enron built. A decade after Enron withdrew from the project, the Indian government and two Indian companies are promising to...

The economist and political commentator who was appointed to a four-member team of the UN to recommend reforms to the global financial system critiques Budget 2010 Economist and political commentator Prabhat Patnaik, currently vice-chair of the Kerala Planning Board, is a strong critic of the government’s economic policies. In 2008, Patnaik, who has taught at JNU since the 1970s, was appointed to a four-member team of the UN to recommend...

NAGPUR: Farmers in Maharashtra's Vidarbha region are hoping for a Rs 30,000 crore (Rs 300 billion) development package in Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's budget, only two days away. According to the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS), in view of the neglect faced by the region since independence, it was high time the central government looks at Vidarbha seriously and announces a hefty development package. "The Maharashtra government has spent over...

In an unprecedented move, which could lead to simmering down the tension between the highways ministry and the Planning Commission, the principal adviser (infrastructure) in the planning panel Gajendra Haldea has withdrawn an RTI application seeking status of highway projects approved by Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC). The retired bureaucrat and a member of the PPPAC had filed the application before director (RTI) asking for status of NHAI projects...

The drowning Sundarbans, receding Gangotri, excessive and untimely rain in Maharashtra and unprecedented droughts in Madhya Pradesh. Seen in isolation, these events may seem like random coincidences. Put it all together and the story that emerges is of an impending catastrophe. As mankind raced towards industrial and consumption driven development goals, the concept of sustainability got lost somewhere along the way. While we, the common people, might think that climate change...