-The Hindu An open letter from Madhav Gadgil says Kasturirangan panel report will rob the region of its biodiversity Dear Dr. K. Kasturirangan, J.B.S. Haldane, the celebrated 19th-century scientist and humanist who quit England protesting its imperialistic invasion of Suez to become an Indian citizen, once said: "Reality is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we CAN suppose!" I could never have imagined that you would be party to a...
More »SEARCH RESULT
'Smart' cards: Jagjit Singh labourer in MP
-The Times of India BHOPAL: If you go by some of the photographs on smart cards used for making payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Rewa district, Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh, Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray, the late ghazal maestro Jagjit Singh and other well-known people are all labourers, though with different names. Many such cards, carrying pictures of celebrities but having names of locals, have...
More »UPA's 'Bharat smiling' feebly -Subodh Varma
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The UPA is strenuously denying that this campaign is its earthy version of the NDA's "India Shining" campaign, but few are buying the denials. Launched as a "multi-media" campaign to highlight its achievements in two successive terms at the Center, it has been christened by political observers are UPA's " Bharat Smiling" campaign. The spirit of the campaign, says the publicity material given out by the...
More »Blood, sweat and tears-Alok Gupta
-Down to Earth For RTI activists of Bihar the cost of exposing corruption is life Twenty-year-old Rahul Kumar, a right to information (RTI) activist, knew the land mafia was behind his parents' murder. His mother and father were involved in a land dispute in Muzaffarpur's Sirisia Jagdish village. Barely a week after filing an RTI application to seek information about the murderers, Kumar was kidnapped. A day later, on March 10, 2012,...
More »No meeting ground -TK Rajalakshmi
-Frontline The Land Acquisition Bill runs into a roadblock as political parties fail to reach an agreement on the substantive features of the draft Bill or on the amendments proposed. The efforts of the United Progressive Alliance government to broker a consensus on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2012, which has been pending for over a year, have not paid off not because...
More »