Peasant leader and RTI activist Akhil Gogoi, who is spearheading an anti-corruption campaign in the state almost single-handedly, will move the Election Commission with details of property owned by ministers and their families ahead of the forthcoming Assembly elections. Gogoi today said the recent asset lists made public by some of the ministers revealed only a small portion of their assets, scattered across different parts of the state. “Using the RTI Act,...

The Rs 51,000-crore Posco steel project in Orissa, that has been delayed for five years, faces the prospect of getting delayed further. The ministry of tribal affairs is now looking at the possibility of whether the South Korean steel project, which also represents the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) in India so far, has actually encroached into the land owned by tribals. The Union ministry of environment and forest (MoEF) has...

Both Posco and the Orissa government said there were no tribals on the land for Posco’s 12 mn tonne steel plant. The presence of 21 tribals in the Voters List has hit their credibility and probably the plant as well A 4-member environment ministry committee has recommended that the environmental clearances given to Posco be revoked for the violation of existing laws, for serious lapses and suppression of facts. As always,...

The Left Front government has fast-tracked the creation of a parallel school education system under the panchayat and rural development department, ignoring opposition from both within and outside the coalition. The government is pitching the bill as a tool to bring more students to schools, but has stoked fears that a system under the panchayat and rural development department — which does not have the expertise to run an education system...

With 130-140 million Indians likely to move to cities in the next decade and an equal number in the one after that, the development of urban India represents the biggest challenge you can think of -- in the next two decades, India will have to create as many new cities as it created in the last several hundred years. Alternately, the existing cities which are home to around 285 million people...