Jairam Ramesh's removal as Environment Minister creates uncertainties for domestic environment policy and the deadlocked global climate talks. WHATEVER one may think of its overall impact, the recent Cabinet reshuffle was not exactly a damp squib. Its single most important component was Jairam Ramesh's replacement as the Minister of State with independent charge in the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) by Jayanthi Natarajan, a relative political lightweight with very little...
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Muslims, by any other name by Farah Naqvi
The (word) games we play to avoid dealing with the problems of some of the poorest Indians. It's strange season again in the corridors of planning and power — the run up to the 12th Five-Year Plan. This is when myriad Planning Commission committees review the (somewhat predictable) non-implementation of policies intended to benefit some of the poorest Indians, and recommend changes, only to repeat the exercise five years later. Forgive my...
More »Aruna Roy, social activist interviewed by Shoma Chaudhury
The Lokpal Bill is in danger of skidding off the rails. As it is introduced in Parliament, eminent activist Aruna Roy tells Shoma Chaudhury why we should not rush into it. THE LOKPAL BILL is now being debated in Parliament, almost 40 years after the idea was first mooted. Unfortunately, parented on one side by decades of wilful government inertia and, on the other, by the panicked hustle of ‘Team...
More »Million of orphans and counting.… by Bindu Shajan Perappadan
The Central Zone that comprises the three States of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh has about six million orphan children (under 18 years), and this figure will shoot up to 7.6 million by 2021, says a new study, “India -- National Child Vulnerability Situation Analysis Report”, conducted by SOS Children's Villages of India. The Central Zone is followed closely by the East Zone which has about 5.20 million orphans and...
More »Making food subsidies work better by Pradeep S Mehta
If Rajiv Gandhi were alive, he would have been delighted to see his view on leakages confirmed by a research study on the public distribution system [How Can Food Subsidies Work Better? Answers from India and the Philippines by Shikha Jha and Bharat Ramaswami (http://www.adb.org/documents/working-papers/2010/economics-wp221.pdf)]. The ADB study showed that the deserving poor in India received only 10 per cent of the benefits from the system. Nearly twice accrues to...
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