Since she could remember, labourer Rama Nag (34) didn't know what her ration card meant, that as one of India's nearly 400 million officially poor people, she was entitled to subsidised foodgrain. Until 2006, here in the heart of impoverished tribal India, on the edge of the sprawling forests of Bastar and the Maoist zone of Dantewada, Nag and her family of four survived on rice and whatever they could...

IN APRIL this year, the Supreme Court directed the Ministry of Environment and Forests to conduct a probe into French cement giant Lafarge’s limestone mines in Meghalaya. Lafarge was alleged to have been operating on forest land without proper clearance. Now it turns out the allegations against the Paris-headquartered multinational are graver. Bangladesh-based Lafarge Surma Cement Ltd — a joint venture between Lafarge Group and Spanish cement company Cementos Morlins —...

In the wake of runaway inflation and the ensuing food crisis, the prime minister constituted three high-powered committees of chief ministers and central ministers to recommend ways of containing inflation, improving PDS and boosting agricultural production. The Working Group on agricultural production was chaired by Haryana chief minister B S Hooda, with CMs of West Bengal, Punjab and Bihar as members. Tucked away, largely unnoticed by the Indian media, as...

The Supreme Court on Monday deferred its hearing on appeals against construction of Nirma Ltd’s cement plant near Mahuva’s coastline and asked the Gujarat High Court to dispose of the review petition filed by the farmers. Requesting the high court for speedy hearing of the review petition, a bench comprising Chief Justice SH Kapadia, Justices KS Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar has kept hearing on appeals after four weeks. A division...

THE Indian Bureau of Mines, in its Indian Minerals Yearbook–2005, notes that Chhattisgarh has 28 different types of minerals, with coal and iron ore being the most abundant. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), in its comprehensive book Rich Lands, Poor People: Is ‘Sustainable' Mining Possible?, says that around 16 per cent of India's coal reserves, 10 per cent of its iron-ore reserves, 5 per cent of its limestone...