An Orissa lawmaker, wheelchair bound since Maoists targeted him seven years ago, was shot dead in front of hundreds of people today as he distributed land title rights to villagers in a rebel-infested zone. The afternoon attack was the third by suspected Maoists on Umerkote MLA Jagabandhu Majhi, who was said to have been popular because of his social work. “It might be a Maoist attack. The area falls in a Maoist...

The Union Government has prepared the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Bill, 2001 (BRAI in brief) for the regulation of the biotechnology sector in India. While the need for strong and careful regulation certainly exists keeping in view the serious threats posed to health and environment by the genetically modified (GM) crops, the BRAI can actually increase this threat by paving the way for the rapid spread of GM crops...

Less than two years after splitting coal mining zones into ‘go and no-go’ — a move that has stalled almost every big-ticket coal mining project in India — the government is scrapping the policy. The Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF), which had framed the policy guidelines along with the Ministry of Coal, on Tuesday accepted that the categorisation of ‘go and no-go’ did not have any legal sanctity. The move was...

At the Independent People's Tribunal in Delhi last year, a young tribal man, Lingaram Kodopi, had a question: "My family is well off, but they [security forces] accuse me of being a Naxalite. Why can't we adivasis wear a good watch or drive a car without being picked up by the police?" In September 2009, 10 men with AK-47s entered Kodopi's home in Sameli, Dantewada, chhattisgarh. They wanted to know...

This wedding season, anxious grooms from Parsa and Ghatburra, two villages in chhattisgarh's Surguja district, were offered financial assistance from an unlikely source. Adani Mining Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Ltd, was handing out loans to all those who could prove that the money would be spent on marriage arrangements. “A company official took us to the bank, opened accounts in our names, and gave us cheques for Rs....