In the largest act of philanthropy by an Indian, Wipro chairman Azim Premji will give about Rs 8,846 crore ($2 billion) to improve school education in India. Other donations to charitable institutions by any person or corporation in India pale in comparison to this massive endowment. It effectively silences critics who say Indian billionaires are measly donors compared to foreign counterparts, and that they focus on big-name western universities rather...

Friday’s Supreme Court rap to “uncle judges” who favour lawyers related to them has opened a Pandora’s box, with state-level lawyers’ bodies claiming to be flooded with phone calls from citizens and moving to mount pressure on the courts. Several state bar councils plan to meet or write to chief justices and the Centre, armed with resolutions urging judges to seek transfer if they have relatives practising law in their courts....

The CAG indicts Uttarakhand for pursuing hydel power projects indiscriminately without concern for the environment. IN a severe indictment of the Uttarakhand government, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India said it was pushing the State towards a major environmental catastrophe by following a highly ambitious hydropower policy. In a report titled “Performance Audit of Hydropower Development Through Private Sector Participation”, which was released recently, the CAG substantiates the allegations...

The food distribution agencies of states across India have failed to lift the desired quantities of foodgrains under the additional allocation made recently for the Public Distribution System, says the Food Corporation of India (FCI), the central government’s procurement and storage agency. FCI sought instructions from the Centre in September to offload an additional 2.5 million tonnes for the PDS as a consequence of the reports about poor storage and rotting...

In 25 years, the Narmada Bachao Andolan has introduced an alternative development discourse in India. ON the full moon night in October, hundreds of people from all over India gathered at Bhilgaon, one of the many tribal villages in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra, in the foothills of the Satpura mountain range and on the banks of the river Narmada. The place resounded with jingles, revolutionary folk songs and strains of...