-The Hindu   ‘An offshoot of trickle-down urbanisation, census towns like Hatia and Hinjewadi can be engines of change for rural areas' Hatia, Ranchi: At the southern edge of Ranchi city lies Hatia, and not all of its residents are sure if theirs is a village or part of Ranchi city's sprawl into its surrounding rural areas. "It's still a village. The panchayat has the land records," says Santosh Majhi, standing by the side...

-Down to Earth One-third of India's population are migrants, but the country is yet to make a policy or plan for them, says collaborative study report by Institute of Social Sciences and UNICEF As many as 309 million people, nearly a third of India's population, were migrants according to the 2001 Census. But the only ‘right' which they are able to exercise is the one that allows all citizens the right to...

-The Hindustan Times Narendra Modi has in his poll speeches blamed the UPA government on more than one occasion for farmer suicides while admitting to just one such death due to agrarian reasons in 10 years in Gujarat. But an HT investigation has established his claim to be false. Copies of FIRs, last declarations by farmers and internal records of the state police accessed by HT reveal at least 54 farmers in...

-Women's Feature Service   For tribal communities, the forest has traditionally been their habitat, their source of income and their nutritional lifeline. So protection of the green cover and ready access to forest produce are issues that are connected with their survival. In India, while The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, recognises the rights of forest-dwellers over land and other resources, in reality there...

-The Hindu   Ideological labels are likely to mislead by channelling the debate into issues of capitalism and socialism and detract from the real problem George Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Having forgotten the license-permit-quota-raj that enveloped us from 1950 to 1980 and its ‘crony socialism,' many intellectuals, mediapersons and politicians have now discovered ‘crony capitalism.' The license raj consisted of stifling controls imposed on...