The Planning Commission’s definition of poverty is inexplicable In the urban sprawl that is Delhi, as in any other metro in the country, earning no more than Rs 25 per day with a family to support would prove nightmarish. Food and clothes have to be bought, there may be school-going children, colds, fevers or upset stomachs to get treated, someone with a chronic problem needing long-term treatment. Surely, someone living...

The government's acquisition of land for projects has been facing protests across the country, the violence in Uttar Pradesh [ Images ] being only the latest. As people's power collides with public projects, MR Madhavan explains what land acquisition is all about What is Land Acquisition? Land acquisition is the process by which the government forcibly acquires private property for public purpose without the consent of the land-owner. It is thus...

Bhatta Parsaul was once a quiet farming village but now, as it finds itself at the centre of a major political row, it is strewn with mounds of ash, burnt-out motorcycles, tractors and cars. In early May villagers here clashed with armed police who tried to break up a four-month-old sit-in protest at the village. They had been fighting the terms of the acquisition of their farmland in the Greater Noida...

In the 1920s, a young Tamil girl sang and starred in her school musical. It was, ostensibly, a private event with few outsiders. Yet so exceptional was her singing that Swadesamitran ran her photograph and wrote about the event. Seeing that photo in the newspaper, her household “was appalled” for, as the music historian V Sriram writes, “good, chaste women never had their photographs published in papers”. Today, this seems like...

The curiosum of a ‘red regime’ with a knack to get re-elected term after term for over more than three decades within the ambit of a full-fledged multi-party democracy has finally disappeared. The Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has not merely lost the poll in West Bengal, it has been made mincemeat of. Its vote share has come down from close to 50 per cent...