“There is never enough rice to go around for the whole family,” says tribal woman Leela   With a handful of grain and a head full of recipes, Leela cooks rice in a pot balanced on three stones in a room with a few bricks knocked out to let in sunlight in this village barely 150 km from Raipur, Chhattisgarh capital. When rice is scarce, she adds more water to make a broth,...

-The Times of India   Anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare has returned centrestage, though armed with a political and electoral agenda this time. He has warned the ruling Congress that he will campaign against it in five states going to polls next year - unless the government adopts the Jan Lokpal Bill in Parliament's forthcoming winter session. The Gandhian seems to have abandoned his earlier non-political stance, now identifying the Congress as a...

The beneficiaries of the land reforms in West Bengal get pushed out of their land under the new regime. MOGHAI MUNDA is dead. No one is there to mourn him but his distraught parents and his young wife who seems to have lost her power of speech. But it is a significant death, even if it is ignored by the ubiquitous media and, therefore, by the world at large. Like the...

The 12th Plan Approach Paper looks upon land more as raw material for mining and industrialisation than as a source of livelihood for the poor. DESPITE a fast economic growth, more than 60 per cent of the population of India is still dependent on land. The 12th Plan Approach Paper, however, looks upon land not as a source of livelihood for the poor but as raw material for mining and industrialisation....

-The Indian Express   Anna Hazare goes for broke again — after having ensured that Parliament was committed to taking his version of the Lokpal bill as a starting point, he now threatens another insurgency against the Congress-led government at the Centre if the bill does not become law by the end of the winter session. He and his team will campaign in the five states that head for elections next year,...