There isn't a single burning, insurmountable issue because of which workers at Maruti's Manesar plant have struck work thrice in the last five months . Sruthijith KK & Chanchal Pal Chauhan report from Manesar that at its core lie accumulated grievances and resentment, and events are adding fuel to the fire A day after workers at Maruti Suzuki's Manesar facility went on strike in June, 55-year-old MM Singh, the company's head...

The key to determining the events that led to the death of nine Meo Muslims in clashes in Bharatpur’s Gopalgarh on September 14 could lie with two figures, a Meo and a Gurjjar, both “underground” at the moment. The Meo is a 47-year-old maulvi called Abdul Rashid, who was allegedly severely assaulted by the Gurjjars the day before the killings, which greatly agitated the Meos. The Gurjjar is an unidentified man who...

Managing our soil and water resources in a sustainable and equitable manner needs a new political vision, which can be expressed through the proposed Land Acquisition Bill and the recently formed Global Soil Partnership. On the basis of a proposal I had made three years ago, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched a Global Soil Partnership for Food Security and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation at a multi-stakeholder conference, held...

The global 'farmland grab' in Ethiopia and the rest of Africa has become competitive, with companies from Asia, including India and China, joining it. AN extraordinary new process has been at work in the past few years: the aggressive entry of Indian corporations into the markets for agricultural land in Africa. At one level, this process is simply following the hoary old tradition in global capitalism of firms (often supported...

In a major climbdown from its stand during the opposition days, the Congress in Kerala on Wednesday decided not to evict energy major Suzlon from tribal land at ecologically-sensitive Attappadi hills, where the firm had illegally erected windmills. During the previous LDF regime, the Congress had vigorously campaigned to evict the windmill owners from tribal land and the party had even sought the intervention of the national leadership. Instead of pulling down...