The Supreme Court on May 7 ruled that natural resources were national assets that belonged to the people and were ideally exploited by public sector undertakings. This obviously implies that local communities, including tribals, living on mineralised land, enjoy entitlements but not prescriptive ownership rights to such national assets. This is an important reiterative clarification defining mineral rights in Fifth Schedule areas that are currently in contention. Whether PSUs should...

India lives in its villages, Gandhi said. But increasingly, the people of India are dying on its roads. India overtook China to top the world in road fatalities in 2006 and has continued to pull steadily ahead, despite a heavily agrarian population, fewer people than China and far fewer cars than many Western countries. While road deaths in many other big emerging markets have declined or stabilized in recent years,...

The first meet of the newly constituted second National Advisory Council or NAC, which is expected to set the social agenda for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance or UPA government, on Thursday laid down its broad agenda for its functioning. The discussions, which lasted for over three hours, revolved around crucial Legislations such as the Food Security Bill, the Communal Harmony Bill and the Forest Rights Bill. The 14-member council later...

Food security is likely to top the resurrected National Advisory Council's (NAC) agenda when its members gather here on Thursday for their introductory meeting. They will also meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. However, sources in the NAC told The Hindu that before food security became a reality, they expect a long hard battle ahead, similar to the one NAC-I faced over the enactment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act,...

Never mind the Kirit Parikh committee's proposal for a 20% reduction in pan-India allocation of subsidised kerosene to stem oil companies' under-recoveries, the UPA government might do just the opposite. It is mulling not only the retention of the commodity—used by a vast segment of rural India for lighting—in the targeted public distribution system (TPDS) but also introduction of another item: edible oil. Even as she is about to take over...