In a setback to the climate talks underway in Durban, discussions on finance, a key element of a successful outcome, appear to have hit the slow road.  The discussions on the two integral elements - the Green Climate Fund and sources for long-term funding - have been put on hold.  With the fate of the climate fund with predictable fund source hanging in balance, it is perhaps time for India to push...

In the winter of 2009, Vilam Singh, a young tribal farmer from Chhattisgarh's Kawardha district, applied for 100 rupee-a-day work under MNREGA, the rural job scheme.  One year later, the same below-the-poverty line farmer bought land worth 3.36 crore rupees in another district, Janjgir Champa.  What explains the sudden turn of fortune?  "He did not turn rich overnight. He was simply roped in to act as a front by a power company that...

Chief minister Nitish Kumar’s ambitious new effort on land survey and consolidation could become another perilous flirtation with the hornet’s nest. Days after its unveiling at the presentation of the first annual report card of Nitish’s second term, a top minister in his cabinet sounded both alarm and caution on the land survey proposal. “Land, as the chief minister himself knows, is an extremely sensitive and volatile issue,” he told The...

Yerra Srilakshmi was an IAS topper but has added another feather to her cap, although a dubious one. She is the first woman IAS officer to be arrested for alleged corruption. The 1988-batch officer, held yesterday in connection with the mining case involving the Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC), owned by arrested former Karnataka minister and mining baron Gali Janardhan Reddy, was today remanded in CBI custody for three days by a local...

Watching the recent debate on the poverty line has been a depressing experience. As the debate unfolded, we witnessed self-righteous commentators engaged in a game of one-upmanship to prove that no one was more concerned for the poor than they, electronic media failing in its responsibility to inform the public simple facts and the Planning Commission proving itself incapable of communicating in simple terms the rationale behind its proposal either...