Anyone can talk big things, but nothing beats the old saying; “Action speaks louder than words”. How do we tackle the situation where most of the so called concerned people are actually opportunists who are waiting for someone to get the beating first and decide? What will happen in a society where everyone is an opportunist with illusionary autocratic mentality; sitting comfortably at a distance and only pointing fingers of...

French nuclear giant Areva, which is planning to sell India six masssive1650 MWe EPR nuclear reactors for the Jaitapur site in Maharashtra, is facing serious financial difficulties with net losses in 2011 placed at well over €1 billion. Areva's CEO, Luc Oursel, announced drastic job cutbacks and the sale of over €2 billion worth of assets, essentially in the company's uranium mines sector, to offset these losses. Trading in the company's...

Some time ago, newspapers in Britain carried full-page advertisements from the curiously named British Pig Association. This consortium of pig farmers was clamouring publicly that the supermarket chains were squeezing the farmers dry. Alongside them, Britain’s dairy farmers complained that a supermarket cartel was paring down their prices, while production costs went up and up. These farmers too have powerful lobbies; they are still in business. To this end, Britain, like...

-The Business Standard   Vimla Devi is a committed anganwadi worker (AWW) in a remote village in Uttar Pradesh, the most populated state of India. Anganwadi is a village level institution under Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), one of the most talked about flagship programmes of the Indian Government. She is also the weakest link in a critical programme, which is underfunded, says Shantanu Gupta in the first of field-data reports, the...

The UID in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act may simplify the administrator's task, but will not make a poor man's task any easier. EVERY time there is talk of tinkering with the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), it is time we recalled how and why the Act came into existence. The passage of the NREGA was Parliament's response to a people's movement that grew out of the recognition and...