-The Hindu Business Line     Whatever the criticisms against the UPA government may be, its effort to provide employment to large sections of the population under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act must be lauded. Yet, after the initial success of the scheme, the enthusiasm of the Central government itself seems to have diminished in its second term in power. How palpable is the shift to lower gear? Representatives of the UPA...

-Economic and Political Weekly     The usual explanations for the divergence between calorie intake and consumption expenditure in India ignore the enormous squeeze on food budgets arising from dispossession (leading to loss of access to common property resources), rising migration (involving a loss of access to non-market food items) and the forced turn to the private sector for social sector services that are more expensive than public sector provision. It is the...

-The Hindu     They used a legal loophole to violate environmental norms Ninety-four of the 192 iron ore mining leases in Odisha do not have the mandatory environmental clearances. And of the 96 that did have them, 75 have mined far beyond their permitted levels over the past several years, the Justice M.B. Shah Commission report on illegal iron and manganese ore mining has said. The Hindu has accessed parts of the report,...

-The Indian Express India faces no risk of violating its commitments under WTO The Indian delegation, led by commerce minister Anand Sharma, is approaching the WTO Ministerial in Bali with a ‘begging bowl'. The government has agreed to the so-called ‘peace clause'-a euphemism for not taking any penal action for violating commitments under Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)-proposed by WTO Director General but with the caveat that this will remain in place until...

-IPS News Bhubaneswar: More than a month after Cyclone Phailin battered Orissa, tribes in the eastern Indian coastal state are still feeling its wrath. Besides the damage to their homes and hearths, it has also meant a loss of their traditional food. "Calamities like Cyclone Phailin affect all equally, but the tribes are far more vulnerable to the impact of calamities because of lesser resilience," Special Relief Commissioner P.K. Mahapatra tells IPS. This...