The South Asian Media Commission's (SAMC) India Chapter on Monday viewed with “shock and anguish” the recent disclosures of high-profile lobbyists seeking to manipulate media coverage to serve the interests of sections of the corporate sector. Particularly disturbing were the moves to use mediapersons for help to influence decisions by the government and leadership of the ruling dispensation on crucial issues such as the composition of the Union Cabinet, the SAMC...

A panel discussion organised here on Friday by The Editors Guild of India, the Press Association, the Press Club of India and the Indian Women Press Corps on “Radia tapes and journalistic ethics” turned into a slanging match between journalists and Editor-in Chief of CNN-IBN Rajdeep Sardesai after he pitched in strongly for Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi, saying they had been judged guilty without corroborative evidence. On the panel...

The Union government intends to launch by January end a scheme aimed at improving the status of women as agriculturists and open up opportunities for their empowerment. The scheme, to be taken up by the Ministry of Rural Development, has been named Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP). It will be launched as a sub-component of the renamed, but yet to be launched, National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), which was earlier known...

A meticulous study of the agrarian relations in three villages. ONE of our senior sociologists once drew my attention to the distinction between economics and other social sciences. Other social sciences – sociology and anthropology, for instance – he said, pay a great deal of attention to gathering primary data and interpreting them, whereas economics relies on secondary data for its analysis. This is, to a large extent, a fair...

The minister for environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh’s order stopping Vedanta Aluminum Ltd and the Orissa Mining Corporation from mining bauxite in the Niyamgiri Hills to feed the company’s adjacent Lanjigarh aluminum refinery plant located in one of the country’s poorest districts in the name of tribal interest tends to miss the wood for the trees. It is based on the report of a four-member expert group under N C...