PRONAB MONDAL TRAVELLED TO THE DENSE FORESTS OF JUNGLE MAHAL IN WEST MIDNAPORE TO FIND OUT HOW MAOISTS ARE USING THE RESPITE FROM POLICE OPERATIONS NOT ONLY TO REGROUP BUT ALSO TO LAUNCH DEVELOPMENT WORK TO WIN OVER THE IMPOVERISHED VILLAGERS Scene I: A small, one-room building with an asbestos roof in the middle of a forest in West Midnapore’s Jungle Mahal. Inside, a man sits at a table with a...

Private schools may no longer be able to refuse to provide information under the RTI Act under the pretext of being a 'private authority'. The Central Information Commission (CIC), in a recent hearing against a private school, ruled that the school, which receives substantial funds from the government and was controlled by different agencies under the Delhi administration, including the DDA and the Directorate of Education, comes under the ambit...

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...

Ankaji Bhai Gangar, a 49-year-old subsistence farmer, stood in line in this remote village until, for the first time in his life, he squinted into the soft glow of a computer screen. His name, year of birth and address were recorded. A worker guided Mr. Gangar’s rough fingers to the glowing green surface of a scanner to record his fingerprints. He peered into an iris scanner shaped like binoculars that...

-The Times of India   Students, teachers and educationists unanimously demanded that the state frame rules under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act to make schools free of corporal punishments and mental harassment to children. People raised the demand at a public hearing organized by Mathews Philip, representative appointed by National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) for Karnataka to monitor the implementation of RTE Act, at...