The $12 billion mega steel plant project of South Korean behemoth Posco proposed to be set up near Paradip port hangs in balance between promise and protest. While chief minister Naveen Patnaik assured the South Korean president, Lee Myung-Bak, to expedite the much-delayed project, anti-plant protesters have launched an indefinite dharna opposing the project. “I assured the South Korean President that the Posco steel plant project will be expedited. Of course, our...

Each night, as temperatures continue to plunge and Delhi shivers through its coldest winter in the last decade, a few more people lose their lives on its streets. The people who succumb to the cold include rickshaw-pullers, balloon-sellers and casual workers, the footloose underclass of dispossessed people who build and service the capital city of the country and yet are forced to sleep under the open sky. They die because...

Activists realise it takes a fight to translate democracy from thin paper to thick action In the winter of 1997, advocate Ashok Agarwal filed a petition in the Supreme Court opposing the nearly 400 per cent hike in school fees. This was the year the Fifth Pay Commission recommendations were implemented and the salaries of teachers shot up. Parents trying to cope with the overall price rise were suddenly hit by...

The ministry of personnel has shown a surprising lack of alacrity in prosecuting errant babus In August last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was keynote speaker at the annual meeting of India’s premier anti-corruption agency, the CBI. There, addressing officers of the agency and state vigilance bureaus, he made a telling remark, “Our anti-corruption agencies must make the cost of corruption unacceptably high for those indulging in this evil practice.” The prime...

Top priority should be given to farmers’ and farm-related issues Collectors told to monitor the progress of welfare schemes Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister K. Rosaiah has set a six-point agenda for Collectors to provide good governance and to gear up the official machinery for effectively implementing welfare/development programmes in Andhra Pradesh. During an informal meeting with Chief Secretary S. V. Prasad and CMO officials on Sunday ahead of two-day Collectors’ conference, scheduled from...