The neo-colonial rush for global farmland has gone exponential since the food scare of 2007-2008. Last week's long-delayed report by the World Bank suggests that purchases in developing countries rose to 45m hectares in 2009, a ten-fold jump from levels of the last decade. Two thirds have been in Africa, where institutions offer weak defence. As is by now well-known, sovereign wealth funds from the Mid-East, as well as state-entities from China,...

"It is wrong to say that we will become a super cabinet. We are here to get the Indian bureaucracy to see reason to carry forward social projects related to areas like health, food, agriculture speedily and make sure that people like (Planning Commission deputy chairman) Montek Singh Ahluwalia gets the correct picture and figures on social issues," a member of the National Advisory Council told rediff.com. The member argued...

K.N. Raj, widely respected development economist and teacher and one of the architects of the Indian Plan edifice, passed away here on Wednesday. He was 85. Dr. Raj — who was the economic adviser to Prime Ministers from Jawaharlal Nehru to P.V. Narasimha Rao, and set the pace of India’s economic growth story from the First Five-Year Plan — had been keeping indifferent health for some time. He was admitted to...

The independence of the judiciary and the rule of law will be severely compromised if the integrity of the higher judiciary is not protected by an independent, informed, transparent, fair and robust process.  The former Chief Justice of India, P.B. Gajendragadkar, said: “Wise judges never forget that the best way to sustain the dignity and status of their office is to deserve respect from the public at large by the...

Here’s a hypothetical, though not altogether unfamiliar, scenario that academic and writer Sunil Khilnani invoked in a lecture at the British Museum to warn against what he called the “paradox of India’s new prosperity.” He asked his audience to imagine two traffic lanes, both at a standstill. After a while traffic in one of the lanes starts moving raising hopes of those stuck in the next lane that they, too,...