In a jaw-dropping move, the Uttar Pradesh government has converted 2,367 sq km of the countryside along the Yamuna Expressway, connecting Greater Noida with Agra , into urban land. In a country where policy to create new towns has not ventured beyond the 50 sq km allowed as the maximum area of a Special Economic Zone, this is welcome. But not so, the manner in which the changed land-use is going...

Chhattisgarh special prosecutor TC Pandya on Friday claimed that civil rights activist Dr Binayak Sen's wife Ilina was in correspondence with the ISI — a huge gaffe. For, the ISI she had links with was the Indian Social Institute, not the Pakistani intelligence agency. Pandya was deposing in a local sessions court and said that Sen had dealings not just with local Maoist networks but also international terrorist groups as well. He...

Every passing day makes it clear that the proposed food security law may not come by for a while. One report quoting the Planning Commission even suggested that it can be expected only in 2012. This Twelfth Plan (2012-17) launch has support from the concerned dual Ministry of Agriculture as well as Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution. In that eventuality it does mean a surge in food insecurity.A dispassionate...

The case of the Food Security Bill gets curiouser and curiouser.  What started off as a fight between universalization and targeting has ended (or so it would seem) in a complete victory in the National Advisory Council, Government of India (NAC) for targeting through universalization (if such a thing was possible), with the honourable exception of Prof Jean Dreze, who has to be commended for his ‘note of disagreement’. On...

After the visually-challenged RTI activist Ratna Ala, another RTI crusader from Valsad, Ketan Shah has lodged a complaint stating that he has been threatened for his activism by the chief officer of Valsad nagarpalika and senior officers in the district administration. For Shah, major shock came after the nagarpalika passed a resolution — a copy is with TOI — in the general body meeting on October 19 to blacklist him and...