Government undecided on criteria to identify families below poverty line A survey by the Indian government in 2002 to determine households below poverty line (BPL) left out many poor families. Nearly a decade later, the Union Ministry of Rural Development (MORD) is trying to set the wrong right. But it is unable to decide on the criteria for identifying poor households. As a consequence, the BPL survey that was to...

Asit Tripathy, Chairman of Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) has pointed out that Indian states need to promote contract farming to ensure that farmers get remunerative prices and assured market for their produce apart from getting freed from the clutches of middlemen. India's national agricultural policy also envisages private participation through contract farming and land leasing arrangements to allow accelerated technology transfer, capital inflow and assured market...

A social impact assessment report has slammed the 9900MW Jaitapur nuclear power park proposed in coastal Konkan, saying it would have a negative social and environmental impact on nearby villages. The 40-page report, compiled by a disaster management centre of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, has analysed the social impact the project would have on seven villages where the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd will acquire about 968 hectares. The...

Indian civil society was dismayed and horror-struck when human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen, who has spent over three decades caring for the poor in tribal areas of central India, was sentenced to life imprisonment for ‘sedition’ along with two others, Piyush Guha and Narayan Sanyal by a Raipur Sessions Court judge.  Protests are taking place everywhere in the country and the members of India’s vibrant civil society, peoples’ movements,...

Ratan Tata has initiated an interesting debate on the nature of India’s capitalist class. His characterization of this class as crony capitalists may not be out of place given recent evidence on a politics, media, judiciary and corporate nexus.Crony capitalism is a system in which businesses multiply their wealth not by fair rules of the market, but through their nexus with governments. Classic examples are the distribution of legal permits,...