Orissa government has imposed a seven-month ban on fishing for the nesting and breeding season of Olive Ridley turtles. This will affect the livelihood of at least three lakh fishermen across the state. Fish eaters will have to pay more for sea fishes or will have to satisfy themselves with sweet water fishes. The ban will be in force along 120 km sea coast in six districts of Balasore, Bhadrak,...

A meticulous study of the agrarian relations in three villages. ONE of our senior sociologists once drew my attention to the distinction between economics and other social sciences. Other social sciences – sociology and anthropology, for instance – he said, pay a great deal of attention to gathering primary data and interpreting them, whereas economics relies on secondary data for its analysis. This is, to a large extent, a fair...

India's power revolution seems to have run out of steam due to transmission and distribution losses. The country is losing a huge quota of power to faulty distribution networks and power theft every year. The losses, experts say, are currently 29 %of the total generation, which equals a shocking Rs 45,000 crore in the fiscal year 2009-10 . The drop in losses since 2001 is a negligible 3% . President...

All school children across the country will soon have unique identification numbers (UID) which will help in tracking their movement in educational institutions and academic records. This follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Union Human Resource Development Ministry and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) here on Wednesday. The system will help in tracking students' mobility by creating an electronic registry, right from the primary level through...

India has fallen three places to 87th in Transparency International's latest Corruption Perceptions Index, in which 178 countries were surveyed. India's integrity score has fallen to 3.3 out of 10 in 2010 while it was 3.5 in 2007 and 3.4 in 2008 and 2009. Transparency International India chairman P.S. Bawa on Tuesday said the recent damaging revelations in the Commonwealth Games contracts seems to have increased the perception about corruption and...