Vice-President Hamid Ansari on Monday said challenges still remained in the electoral system. The real empowerment and participative governance at the third tier of the government was still a work in progress. He expressed the hope that the electoral process at the local self-government level would benefit from coordination and sharing of experiences and resources with the EC. He was addressing the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Election Commission of India. Similarly,...

The now-familiar debate over Bt brinjal, the first genetically modified food crop almost poised for commercial production in India, posits greater productivity and resistance to pests against health and environmental concerns. A new semi-debate has been generated by the decision of the Union environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, to conduct public consultations across the country at which scientists, non-governmental organizations, and representatives of consumer bodies may present their views. Scientists in...

SAKHRI NATE (Ratnagiri district): The narrow roads in this fishing village wind down to a crisp blue creek full of frenetic activity. Across the creek is the location of the proposed Jaitapur project being built by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL). There is a primary fishing school run by the government and trainees can be seen in the campus repairing bright red nets. Near the creek, Kamal...

Much like the tsunami waves that devastated many coastal areas five years ago, the closing weeks of 2009 saw an ill wind sweeping across many of our democratic institutions, highlighting that beneath the veneer of the nation’s aspirations towards great power status was a crumbling institutional core. To look at the fourth estate first. The preface to the Press Council of India’s “Norms of Journalistic Conduct” has a section that...

If your child can go from a ‘near zero’ learning ability to getting 95 per cent in mathematics and from a state of malnutrition to WHO-approved standards of health, chances are that you will not find the Naxal ideology all that attractive. I was in the Naxal heartland of Bastar to review the learning skills of children in 300 schools who were being educated by the Naandi Foundation when news...