Ram Prasad Ghosal, a potato farmer from Bamunpara (Dist Burdwan) in West Bengal, owns 10 acres of land. Just two months earlier, though, his ilk faced a major scare. The region witnessed a bumper potato crop of 9.5 million tonnes — 73 per cent higher than last year’s production. Wholesale prices in Kolkata crashed to Rs 300 a quintal. Retail prices, too, dropped to Rs 6-8 a kg. Farmers were...

The Bhopal judgment suggests that were a nuclear disaster to be caused by an operator's negligence, they might be held criminally liable for little more than a traffic accident. The world was watching a trial court in Bhopal on Monday, as the Chief Judicial Magistrate ruled on the criminal responsibility for the gas leak at the Union Carbide factory in 1984. Twenty six years after the event, 178 prosecution witnesses...

The PPP model proposed in the Eleventh Plan provides for no government or social control over education. It will lead to the privatisation and commercialisation of education using public funds.  Public-private partnership (PPP) has become a fashionable slogan in new development strategies, particularly over the last couple of decades. It is projected as an innovative idea to tap private resources and to encourage the active participation of the private sector...

The suburb of Govandi in Mumbai is home to the Indian city's only rubbish dump. On any given day children work and play here, seemingly unaware of the scorching sun and the stench from the waste heaps. Among them are probably some of the 8 million children still out of school across India. Few people notice their presence. But in Govandi alone, more than 1,500 children are thought to be...

Caste proponents say the census must include questions on caste to establish true caste ratios. Opponents say questions on caste are socially divisive. They also raise a behavioural objection: the very announcement of a caste census could encourage people to claim, fraudulently, that they belong to a caste entitled to reservations. This behavioural objection applies as forcefully to surveys for determining poverty. The National Sample Survey Organization conducts periodic surveys on...