The capital got a fulsome dose of the country today, and the country a swift pledge from the capital. Within hours of swarming in from the restive western Uttar Pradesh neighbourhood and trapping New Delhi in feisty gridlock, farmers had forced a retreat by the government on sugarcane pricing and sent the Congress panicking over the electoral consequences of provoking rural anger. Rahul Gandhi, who is blue-printing the Congress’s comeback bid in...
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Lack of transparency and debate in India-EU free trade agreement by Meena Menon
Seven rounds of trade talks between the EU and India have been concluded without any negotiating texts or positions of either party being made public. The widespread optimism about the possible signing of the India-European Union (EU) Free Trade Agreement (FTA) sometime in 2010 fails to take into account the many thorny issues that remain to be resolved. Not the least of them are the tariff negotiations on goods and...
More »Disabled seek equal rights under NREGA by Padmaparna Ghosh
West Bengal, Chhattisgarh are the best performers in providing jobs for the disabled, says govt data Bishnu Chaudhary and his wife Vijaya Devi, both stricken by polio, have been waiting for work for the past two years. But on 2 October, Chaudhary and others like him picked up the shovel to show that they too are able. “We wanted to show that we can also work, just like everyone else...
More »Look East policy comes of age by Sanjaya Baru
The Indo-Asean FTA provides an opportunity to be more engaged with the region This is an important week for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Over the weekend, at the Fourth East Asia Summit in Thailand, he will witness the final fruition of the second most important foreign policy initiative he took during his first term in office — the India-Asean Free Trade Agreement. This should ensure he will be in better...
More »The winter of our austerity by P Sainath
Growing numbers of elected representatives fund their poll campaigns with corporate backing. And growing numbers of people with a big business background have ventured directly into the electoral arena. Corporate Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid’s call for restraint, however mild, on the CEO feeding frenzy at the compensation trough, seems the least objectionable statement made by a Minister in months. (Contrast this, for example, with the Agriculture Minister’s warning that people...
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