Despite Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan's assurance that the government would not go ahead with the Jaitapur nuclear power plant unless it was fully secure, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) has already sought tenders for building a concrete testing laboratory and a meteorological laboratory at Madhban, the proposed site of the plant. Long-term dangers cited As per the advertisement issued in a Marathi daily on Tuesday, the NPCIL called...

Surrounded by lush green wheat and yellow flowering mustard fields at Ekdanta primary school, it is noon and the 57 children in two combined classes are fidgety - impatient for the school served midday meal. The hot meals are served by the Akshaya Patra Foundation, the largest non- profit in India, in partnership with the government’s school meal programme that covers 120 million children in 1.26 million schools across the country. A...

Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has said that though India needs to learn appropriate lessons from the crisis at Japan's nuclear plants, the country cannot give up on nuclear energy. "What has happened in Japan is very serious. We will have to learn appropriate lessons and whatever additional safeguards, additional precautions are required we must take, but I don't believe India can abandon nuclear energy (programme)," Ramesh told mediapersons here yesterday. As...

This book discusses a new poverty agenda for Asia and the role of social policies in economic transformation and reducing poverty. The poverty-reduction agenda is well known. So is the debate over poverty. No one disputes the fact that poverty of income (or expenditure, as countries such as India do not collect household data on income) is an imperfect measure of poverty, as there are non-income dimensions, too. Consequently, we...

Soon after he exposed how bricks were bought for six times their value for roads that were never built in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Amarnath Pandey was shot near his home. The bullet, which he believes was fired by contractors who were benefiting from the brick scam, clipped his ear and grazed his skull, leaving him in hospital for weeks. Pandey, 56, a doctor from Robertsganj, a sleepy city...