Economists’ report says tractors are used for just 178 hrs a year and electric motors are overused That Punjab faces an acute labour shortage each paddy season is a known and established fact. But not many know that 48.66 per cent of the total ‘family labour’ — members of a farmer’s family — available for agriculture remains underutilised in the state. A study of the resources employed in Punjab agriculture throws up...

Two years ago, when I told some of my more cynical fellow-tribals from the journalistic fraternity that I was about to complete a textbook on media ethics, they smirked. Media ethics? That’s an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, they said glibly. What became apparent to me then was that the image of the journalist in India has taken quite a battering. There are many among the aam admi who still...

In poll time, money is the real honey. Political sources shrugged off the detention of Congress MP Rama Chandra Khuntia at Patna airport yesterday for carrying Rs 12.5 lakh cash. The sources said cash, as with most elections, has been flowing freely in spite of the strict norms of the Election Commission. The BJP, which has often been accused of using money power to “influence” elections — Karnataka being a case in point...

The Aadhaar or UID project has grave implications for every Indian. It will enable the government to profile every citizen and track their movements and transactions. There is no guarantee that intimate personal information -- pre-existing illnesses, romantic relationships etc -- won't be shared with other agencies, warns Praful Bidwai. An elaborate charade has begun with the rolling out of the first Aadhaar unique identity numbers in a tribal district of Maharashtra by...

We need spectacle in the capital, not mundane things like schools and hospitals in villages In the final years of the Roman Republic, the Senate kept the masses happy by distributing cheap food and staging big spectacles known as the circus games to get votes. In his satires, the Roman poet Juvenal observed witheringly that governance had been reduced to panem et circenses (bread and circus/games). He was referring to the...