Indian civil society was dismayed and horror-struck when human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen, who has spent over three decades caring for the poor in tribal areas of central India, was sentenced to life imprisonment for ‘sedition’ along with two others, Piyush Guha and Narayan Sanyal by a Raipur Sessions Court judge.  Protests are taking place everywhere in the country and the members of India’s vibrant civil society, peoples’ movements,...

In more ways than one the calendar year 2010 would go down the memory lane as a watershed year for the food and agriculture front in the country which recorded unprecedented growth rate of 4.4 per cent in July-September quarter but by December unprecedented price hike of essential food items especially left consumers in tears.   As the year comes to an end, an embattled government and the Union agriculture ministry stood...

A sea water farming project and a genetic garden of Halophytes are being launched at Vedaranyam today The year 2010 marks the 80th anniversary of the Salt Satyagraha launched at Dandi by Mahatma Gandhi and at Vedaranyam by Rajaji to establish that sea water is a social resource. A Sea Water Farming project and a Genetic Garden of Halophytes are being launched at Vedaranyam on December 26, 2010 to initiate a...

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought a response from the Delhi government on a PIL requesting quashing of nursery admission guidelines framed by the government on the grounds that they violated the Right to Education Act. The court also issued a notice to the Centre and asked for its reply within six weeks. The next date of hearing on the matter is in March next year. The PIL was filed...

THE issue of foodgrain management policy has assumed renewed importance with several reports in the media of large-scale wastage and diversion from the public distribution system (PDS). In a cogently-argued paper recently, Prof Kaushik Basu, a well-known economist and the chief economic adviser in the ministry of finance, has argued for foodgrain to be released in lots of much smaller size into the market, than is presently done by the...