-The Business Standard Ranchi: Jharkhand could qualify for more funds than the Rs 1,500-crore earmarked as labour budget under MGNREGS, if the state pulled up its socks and honoured deadlines while executing the Centre's flagship scheme this fiscal. The word came from Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh who reviewed the job programme and action plans for Saranda and Sarju areas among other things at the Project Building in Ranchi today. "Of the...

-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...

-The Hindu New York: Dayamani Barla was presented with the first ever Ellen L. Lutz Indigenous Rights Award by Cultural Survival, an indigenous peoples' rights organisation The Big Apple is renowned as the home of investment banks, glitzy fashion shows and other 21st-century tributes to prodigious wealth accumulation. But on Thursday it played host to a powerful symbol of Indian adivasis' struggle against oppression, Jharkhand activist and journalist Dayamani Barla. On a rainy...

-The Business Standard How to fix the agricultural pricing mess The government's move to get the mandate of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) reviewed afresh by an expert panel needs to be viewed in a broader perspective - one that weighs political populism against economic logic. It has been argued that minimum support prices (MSPs) have been raised often - and supposedly partly for political reasons - during the...

-The Hindu Business Line It requires a change in mindset to reverse declining sex ratios. The state-wise child sex ratio (number of females per 1000 males in 0-6 years age group) in India during 2001-2011 declined except in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Mizoram, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu (see table). Interestingly, these are the same states that had recorded a significant fall in child sex ratio during 1991-2001. Adverse child sex ratio can have...