The termination of the proposed social audits of works carried out under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in 16 panchayats -- one each from an equal number of districts -- in Rajasthan this past week has come as a rude shock to the social activists who pioneered the job scheme. Coming as it does from the Congress Government in the NREGS flagship State of Rajasthan, the development has...

The road to Khardung La begins in the Indian town of Leh on the northwestern fringe of the Himalayas. Exhaust-spewing army trucks rattle up the side of dry rock, past Buddhist monasteries clinging to the craggy mountainside and alongside small farms barely scraping fertility from the earth. Khardung La, the highest motorable mountain pass in the world, is more than 18,000 ft. above sea level, the air so thin that...

But will have to move on a low carbon trajectory to minimise impact of climate change A month before the heads of state meeting in Copenhagen on climate change, Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said on Thursday that India was willing to be isolated but would not accept legally binding emission cuts. In the same breath, he said domestically India would have to be relentless...

For a man who will inherit vast tracts of fertile farmland in Punjab, India's grain bowl, Jaswinder Singh made what seemed to him a logical career move -- he took a job with a telecoms company in New Delhi. "I can't go back to the village after an M.B.A. Delhi has more money, better quality of life. The job is more satisfying, and you don't depend on the weather or...

AS YOU drive west from Baroda — Gujarat’s cultural capital — towards the coast, it is hard not to marvel at the smooth, fourlane Vadodara-Bharuch National Highway Number 8, which gets you there. The only signs that suggest one is not on cruise control in an SUV somewhere on an expressway in America are occasional roadside dhabas with Indian names and poor passers-by, clad in saris or dhotis. Dwarfed by...