-The Hindu With the era of cheap, bountiful water having been replaced by increasing supply-and-quality constraints, many international investors are beginning to view water as the new oil There is a popular, tongue-in-cheek saying in America - attributed to the writer Mark Twain, who lived through the early phase of the California Water Wars - that "whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over." It highlights the consequences, even if...
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More mines, fewer schools in former Maoist stronghold-Anumeha Yadav
-The Hindu Manoharpur (Jharkhand): Deep inside the Saranda sal forest, Thalkobad lies at the core of what was a CPI (Maoist) "liberated zone" in Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district along the Odisha border. Thalkobad, along with 24 other villages, was reclaimed by the Indian state after a massive military operation - Operation Anaconda-I in August 2011 to destroy the CPI (Maoist) Eastern Regional Bureau and several training camps inside Saranda. The village...
More »Dealing With The Maoists -Chitrangada Choudhury and Ajay Dandekar
-Outlook The Maoists want a military conflict as it brings more adivasis into their fold. The Indian state's best bet is in ensuring that it wins over the aam adivasis to its side. May 25th's condemnable attack by the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army, which ended up killing and injuring over 50 people from Congress politicians to migrant adivasi labourers, cannot be understood without recognising the Maoist party's explicit political aims. These...
More »The continuing tragedy of the adivasis-Ramachandra Guha
-The Hindu The killings of Mahendra Karma and his colleagues call not for retributive violence but for a deeper reflection on the discontent among the tribals of central India and their dispossession In the summer of 2006, I had a long conversation with Mahendra Karma, the Chhattisgarh Congress leader who was killed in a terror attack by the Naxalites last week. I was not alone - with me were five other members...
More »Bihar spends Rs 170cr annually guarding VIPs -Gyan Prakash
-The Times of India PATNA: Bihar spends Rs 170 crore annually deploying 5,000 police personnel out a force of 60,000 as bodyguards for politicians, judges, bureaucrats, police officers, members of constitutional bodies and other governmental functionaries. The NDA government in 2007 had created separate posts of 5,800 bodyguards which were later merged with the police. Patna district police has 1,500 such bodyguards. One constable used to be assigned to each MLA or MLC,...
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