Trinamool Congress government’s policies in West Bengal are leading to suicides of small farmers, a reign of terror in the Jangalmahal area and a curbing of academic and trade union rights. Its student activists beat up students and teachers who do not profess loyalty to the party. Will the CPI(M) which led the previous Left Front government for 34 years and paid the price for its insolence and corruption...

This is called moron management. Instead of debating nuclear safety, India’s Prime Minister is trotting out conspiracies AS SPIN doctors go, the UPA and its media advisers have proved to be pretty good. But as the elected government of the world’s largest democracy, their attitude towards public debate on issues of importance such as nuclear or GMO safety comes across as churlish, vengeful and authoritarian. People who believe that the anti-nuclear struggle...

Kanak Dixit: We have with us Aruna Roy, from Devdungri village in Rajasthan, who has, among other things, been able to take the Right to Information (RTI) from janasunuwais, or public hearings at the village level, all the way to national legislation that encompasses all of India. It is a movement that is truly global in scale. Aruna, a question that has been troubling me quite a bit in the context...

-Live Mint High on hype, the budget speech of the Union finance minister today is merely a statement of account. As India’s economy diversifies—with the private sector playing an increasingly important role—this annual feature has assumed much lower salience. Not only have fiscal policies lost the space they enjoyed in earlier years, even major policy announcements are restricted to being mere statements of account. Examples from other arenas include “activism” on...

Water is the most critical of all natural resources on which modern economies depend. Water scarcity and rapid economic advance cannot go hand-in-hand. Yet, with its per-capita water availability falling to 1,582 cu m per year, India has become water-stressed.  In 1960, India signed a treaty indefinitely setting aside 80% of the Indus-system waters for downstream Pakistan - the most generous water-sharing pact thus far in modern world history. Its 1996...