In 25 years, the Narmada Bachao Andolan has introduced an alternative development discourse in India. ON the full moon night in October, hundreds of people from all over India gathered at Bhilgaon, one of the many tribal villages in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra, in the foothills of the Satpura mountain range and on the banks of the river Narmada. The place resounded with jingles, revolutionary folk songs and strains of...

He came, he spoke, and he got 54,000 jobs. This was on Day One of his India visit. By the time he flies out of New Delhi on November 9, US President Barack Obama would have charmed his way through to force open Indian agriculture to American corporations . And therein hangs the fate of millions of small and marginal farmers. Top on the agenda is the push to make Prime...

Making fresh demand for withdrawal of clearances accorded to Posco's mega steel plant, Left parties today sought shifting of the project from the proposed site near Paradip to any nearby place in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district. The demand was made before the Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh when a delegation of the Left parties including CPI, CPI(M), Forward Bloc along with RJD and Samajwadi Party, met him at New Delhi. In a joint...

POSCO wants to build a USD 12 billion steel mill in eastern India, but the project has faced delays because of environmental worries and protests by local residents concerned about the mill's impact on their agriculture-based livelihoods. Here are some questions and answers about the project, which has already been delayed by three years: What is the project? The world's third-largest steel company wants to set up a mill in the eastern state...

Every afternoon at about four, a slight woman named Runi slips out of the cramped, airless room that she shares with her husband and their sixteen children. She skirts the drainage ditch in front of the building, then walks toward the pile of hardened dung cakes that people in this slum on the edge of the northeastern Indian city of Patna use for fuel. Dressed in a bright-yellow sari shot...