In one section of the university building where I teach, there is an enormous and motley collection of discarded computer-related items, stacked and piled in an unwieldy mess. This has been lying around for a while now, nearly a year, not only because of the prolonged bureaucratic procedures involved in getting material "written off", but also because no one knows what to do with the stuff once it has actually...

Those that have governed in tribal areas must share the responsibility for the negligence of the adivasis. The proposals for a multi-lateral dialogue should be set in that context.  There has been a flurry of concern as also vituperation over the activities of the Maoists in the forests that are mostly home to tribal society. There is a confrontation between the state and this society through the intervention of the...

Opening more medical colleges is not the solution to India’s chronic shortage of doctors in the rural areas.  India is the largest supplier of foreign medical graduates to the United States and the United Kingdom. Yet, its own rural areas have remained chronically deprived of professional doctors. The historical antecedents of these shortages could be traced to a landmark health policy document, the Bhore Committee Report of 1946. That report...

“This is a country on the make.” The speaker was a young assistant to one of India’s rising political stars. And from his perspective, it did look that way. We were sitting in the lobby restaurant of New Delhi’s luxurious Taj Mahal Hotel. That evening, the Taj was not only the place for a government reception following Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s decisive re-election victory, but it was also the scene...

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (2005) differs from the other poverty alleviation measures in two significant respects. Where most welfare programmes cast the state in the role of benefactor offering handouts to the poor, the NREGS is built around notions of citizenship and entitlement. Secondly, the NREGS also facilitates disclosure by means of regular social audits. These audits, mandated to be done by the Gram Sabhas, are intended to...