The stalled Land Acquisition Bill should be completely overhauled. In both China and India the issue of land acquisition has become politically very sensitive. In China by official reports more than 66 million farmers have been dislocated in recent years for various commercial development projects. Local officials in cahoots with local business have been rather cavalier in this matter, and this has inflamed passions in the countryside. In India the...

India’s growth is not falling, although it is not as high as before If there is a crisis, there should be economics to deal with it; what use are economists if they are not around to help out when things get bad? And it is not enough to have economics. There was plenty of economics in 1929. As output and employment plummeted, economists said, this is good. It will take...

More Indians go to bed hungry today than they did on the eve of Independence 62 years ago So, more Indians go to bed hungry today than they did on the eve of Independence sixty two years ago. The per capita calorie intake, experts say, has dropped to what it was at the end of World War II. On top of it now, over 25 per cent of the country...

Many grassroots activists in Chhattisgarh are circulating a note among all democratic elements in the country to raise the demand of de-escalation of conflict between the security forces and the adivasis. They want lakhs of displaced adivasis of Dantewada be allowed to return to their villages and rebuild their ravaged agrarian and forest based economies. However, this time they also want an assurance from the state government on right to...

THE LAUNCH of free market liberalisation in 1991 triggered widespread prosperity for the Indian middle classes, making them the showpiece of India’s muchfêted economic boom. But little has ever changed for the bulk of the country’s poor, hundreds of millions of who continue to barely scrape through from day to day, doomed to extreme poverty and, consequently, malnutrition, disease and death. For decades, many among these millions have survived, however...