The village bureaucrat shifted from foot to foot, hands clasped behind his back, beads of sweat forming on his balding head. The eyes of hundreds of wiry village laborers, clad in dusty lungis, were fixed upon him. A group of auditors, themselves villagers, read their findings. A signature had been forged for the delivery of soil to rehabilitate farmland. The soil had never arrived, and about $4,000 was missing. The...

The issues relating to the victims of endosulfan, sprayed in the plantations of Kasargod district in Kerala, have snowballed once again. “Earthworms emerged from the soil, and, subsequently, died. Then birds came to eat the earthworms and they died as well.”   “Some termites were killed in a cotton farm sprayed with endosulfan. A frog fed on the dead termites, and was immobilised a few minutes later. An owl which flew over...

Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar today said the government should take note of Ratan Tata’s statement that India risked turning into a “banana republic” and cautioned against the excessive use of the CBI. Pawar’s statement came in the middle of a CBI crackdown on an alleged bribes-for-loans scandal involving several top financial officials and real estate players in Maharashtra. Another real estate project, which was once associated with Pawar’s relatives, has been...

The Kisan Swaraj Yatra, a nation-wide mobilization drawing fresh attention to the “continuing agricultural crisis in India”, and calling for a comprehensive new path for Indian agriculture, will reach Chandigarh on December 2, 2010.   The bus-Yatra started at the Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram on October 2, and is passing through 20 states before reaching Rajghat, New Delhi on December 11. KSY is organised by all India network of over 400 organisations named...

James Cameron, director of sci-fi blockbuster Avatar, finds himself embroiled in the controversy surrounding Lavasa, India's first “private hill city” that has been in the news for alleged environmental law violations. Mr. Cameron, who is slated to speak at the big-ticket ‘Innovation and Knowledge' (INK) conference being held in association with Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) between December 9 and 12 at Lavasa, has been urged to boycott the event. In a...