Not only are the Forest Rights Act and the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act routinely violated in Chhattisgarh, the adivasis are also short-changed on legislative representation and reservations in government jobs. As the state cedes land to capital while reducing the adivasis to an ornamental presence, there is increasing assertion of adivasi identity, born out of class predicaments and experiences of displacement as much as notions of indigeneity. Supriya Sharma...

Neglected by conventional banks, low-income women in Satara have set one up themselves. Not long after Chetna Gala Sinha came to the drought-stricken region of Mhaswad in western Maharashtra to marry a farmer and prominent local social activist, she began putting her university degree in finance into action. Local women, she observed, were wearing themselves out in subsistence livelihood such as growing grapes or selling vegetables. In 1992, Chetna, who grew up...

In Bihar, the coupon system to distribute PDS grain fails to prevent corruption. AT the Jamaluddin gram panchayat in Patna district on January 26, 2007, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar launched an ambitious reform of the public distribution system (PDS) in Bihar: a coupon system. He claimed that it would “empower the poor and stop black-marketeering” and that it was “not a simple coupon but a powerful weapon in the hands...

-Express News Service Queationing the methods and the ethics of Anna Hazare’s proposed fast in Mumbai next week to press for a strong Lokpal bill, the Bombay High Court today refused to intervene in the petition by his supporters seeking concessions in charges for using a government ground as the venue for its campaign. Reacting to the court’s observations, Hazare said that his team would hold the protest at the MMRDA ground...

-The Economic Times Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has said he had directed three institutions - NIPFP, NIFM and NCAER - to come out with a defendable assessment of the quantum of black money stashed away by Indians in foreign banks. Replying to the discussion on the adjournment motion moved in the House by BJP veteran LK Advani on "the situation arising out black money deposited illegally in foreign banks", Mukherjee declared...