A powerful central CPM leader has said “it is superstitious to completely oppose” genetically modified seeds, a shift that goes against the Left Front stand in Bengal that has a high stake in the debate. “It is superstitious to completely oppose these kinds of seeds. Such seeds could be used after thoroughly ensuring through tests that they would not harm human beings, animals and plants,” S. Ramachandran Pillai, CPM politburo member,...

The historian Ramachandra Guha has famously described India as a fifty-fifty democracy. But even admirers of India as a functioning democracy will perhaps be forced to admit that certain events in 2010 forced the needle to move beyond fifty against democracy. Threats to democracy and democratic rights have never been as evident, and as powerful, since the dark days of the Emergency in 1975-76 as they were in the course...

NRHM needs to revitalise systems, monitor their functional performance and investigate their impact on the indices of health. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was launched in 2005 to bring about a dramatic improvement in the health system and health status of people in rural India. It seeks to provide universal access to health care, which is affordable, equitable, and of good quality. It aims at making architectural corrections to basic...

I am very upset about the court decision in Chhattisgarh about Binayak Sen. It is a huge perversion of our system of justice, and particularly of the laws concerning sedition. It’s not at all clear, to start with, that the thing he has been exactly accused of — of passing letters — has been really proved beyond doubt. Secondly, even if this were correct, that doesn’t amount to sedition. He hasn’t...

A maid hired from a tribal zone without the panchayat’s sanction could bring a legal case of human trafficking if amendments planned to a poorly enforced law are carried through. The changes are proposed in the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (Pesa), which aims to give tribal communities in 94 districts greater powers over land and resources. The zones are in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand,...