“Wherever there is a lamp, there is darkness below it,” said Bava Bhalekar, a fisherman and local leader in this village roughly a hundred miles south of Mumbai. “The tragedy is that while our village has this project, we ourselves don’t have electricity.” “This project” is the power plant that Enron built. A decade after Enron withdrew from the project, the Indian government and two Indian companies are promising to...
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Dalit is a Dalit even in a 'free' market by Radhika Ramaseshan
Caste is feudal, the market free and equal. Correct? Ask Ratan Lal Sirswal or Deepak Jatav. Sirswal, 75, had started off as a sweeper but is now one of the oldest businessmen in Panipat, Haryana. He quit his sweeper’s job once his handloom unit was on its feet. His success, he says, came largely because he hid the fact that he was born a Valmiki Dalit. Customers who discovered his caste origins...
More »Inflation rises to 9.89% in February
Wholesale price-based inflation rose to 9.89 per cent in February from 8.56 per cent in the previous month due to increase in prices of certain food items such as sugar and the hike in excise duty on fuel announced last month. Sugar prices rose by 55.47 per cent in February year-on-year while potatoes turned costlier by 30 per cent and pulses by 35.58 per cent. Among fuel items, petrol prices...
More »Reunited Yet Divided by Supriya Sharma
AS HE FINISHED an animated anecdote-filled account of how they wrested a tworoom apartment in return for bulldozed homes on the Banks of the Sabarmati, Rajendra Nathalal Choudhary turned towards a middle aged man and said, “This is all thanks to Mohammad bhai. He inspired us to unite and fight for our rights. If not for him, we would have been homeless.” Mohammad bhai blushed, in the way a middle-aged man...
More »Inflation moving fast towards the double-digit mark
With food prices showing no signs of abating and the impact of the fuel price hike in the latest budget making its presence felt, inflation moved fast towards the double-digit mark, touching 9.89 per cent in February, the highest in 16 months. The wholesale price-based inflation stood at 8.56 per cent in January. This could well cross the double-digit mark in March, experts said. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had earlier said the...
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