-The Hindu Business Line The recent devastation of crops shows that the Indian economy continues to be a ‘gamble’ on the rain. But can India Meteorological Department’s new model make it predictable? Moisture wrecks a farmer's life. Since February this year, lakhs of farmers across 14 states were left with damaged crops. Unseasonal rains destroyed crops on 11 million hectares spread over Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Punjab....

-Economic and Political Weekly Unlimited growth for prosperity in a fi nite planet is not possible. Ecological economists like Tim Jackson, Peter Victor, and others talk about prosperity without growth and highlight the need for greening the economy on a community scale. Using the "criteria of green economy enterprise" set by Jackson and Victor as a tool, this article looks at khadi production, India's community-level cloth production system. Sumanas Koulagi (k.sumanas@yahoo.in) is...

-IANS The NHRC on Tuesday said it has rescued 101 bonded labourers from Madhubani in Bihar, after an NGO complained they were being made to work forcefully on agricultural lands and not being paid minimum wages. The 101 labourers from 38 families were Musahars, a community classified as Scheduled Caste. The rescue operation was carried out following a complaint received from an NGO in December 2014. The labourers have been provided relief under various...

-Newsclick.in The government in India continues to kow-tow to corporate lobbies at the cost of the environment and public health including occupational health. While always an integral part of ruling class politics in India, as witnessed in the seemingly never-ending saga of the Bhopal Gas Disaster, this has reached new heights under the BJP government led by PM Narendra Modi which is rapidly dismantling even the already weak environmental regulatory structure....

-The Times of India It has become fashionable to announce the setting up of new AIIMS or AIIMS-like institutes in every annual union budget. After the first six were announced in 2006, finance minister Arun Jaitley announced the setting up of four more in the last budget and another six in the current one, taking the total number to 16, not counting the original one in Delhi. While announcing new AIIMS...