BD Sharma is one of India's foremost experts on tribal issues. He has served as collector of undivided Bastar district in Chhattisgarh and commissioner for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and has campaigned extensively to protect the rights of tribals. Currently, the coordinator of Bharat Jan Andolan, a network of grass-roots organisations, Sharma tells that current notions of development are at the root of the Maoist insurgency: What has changed...

Statistical poverty lines should not become real-life eligibility criteria for food entitlements.  Nothing is easier than to recognise a poor person when you see him or her. Yet the task of identifying and counting the poor seems to elude the country's best experts. Take for instance the “headcount” of rural poverty — the proportion of the rural population below the poverty line. At least four alternative figures are available: 28...

A new online database produced by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shines a light on how women lag far behind men in their access to land, major stumbling bock to rural development. The Gender and Land Rights Database offers up-to-date information on the legal rights of men and women differ in nearly 80 countries, allowing users to find the total number of women landholders and rural households...

A local court in Maharashtra has upheld a farmer's plea that India's first family had fraudulently usurped a little more than one hectare of his farmland. Surprisingly, the order was made last December 7 but never made public since the order wasn't given to either party until Tuesday. In the order, the court of Daryapur subdivisional officer Ashok Amankar directed striking off the names of President Pratibha Patil Shekhawat's family...

TIRUNELVELI: Following complaints of moneylenders occupying some of the houses at the Samaththuvapuram in Valliyoor, Collector M. Jayaraman has ordered to check the genuineness of the occupants. The Samaththuvapuram has 100 houses, a community hall, playground, ration shop, a park and other basic facilities. As each house in this colony is situated on five cents of land, close to the National Highway, Government Hospital and Tamil Nadu Housing Board apartments, its...