How the global garment industry is using regressive customs in Tamil Nadu, enabling it to exploit young women workers… Behind the smiling exterior of a fast-growing economy lie the tears and tragedies of women like these workers. Girls. Dowry. The two go together. No matter what you do to separate them, they somehow get conjoined, like twins that have remained connected in one body. We are told this is one of the...

Dr Binayak Sen has given a double blow to the state administration of Chattisgarh. First, the Supreme Court rejected the sedition charges levelled against him for which the state courts found him guilty. And then he was appointed to the 40-member steering committee on health in the planning commission. The Chattisgarh government has been vocally protesting against Sen's appointment, saying that he still remains a convict out on bail and should...

Good politics and good economics can make compatible bedfellows, if the timing is right. Food, its producers and consumers, are now the Centre's most potent political and economic battleground. Politically speaking, this could be the best time for the UPA to reclaim its dog-eared pro-people credentials through the Bill. The Right to Food Bill has triggered many apprehensions, including fears of a higher subsidy burden, an adverse impact on private...

The debate over the National Food Security Act has been reduced to a circus for political parties, NGOs and the National Advisory Council to perform verbal calisthenics. The discussion on who is entitled, who is not entitled and who should be entitled has gone on for over two years. The discourse is deteriorating into informed nit-picking. The time for debate is over; the time for decision is overdue. Let us get...

Bhatta Parsaul was once a quiet farming village but now, as it finds itself at the centre of a major political row, it is strewn with mounds of ash, burnt-out motorcycles, tractors and cars. In early May villagers here clashed with armed police who tried to break up a four-month-old sit-in protest at the village. They had been fighting the terms of the acquisition of their farmland in the Greater Noida...