Development literature is now increasingly talking about rights-based development built on the appeal of the right-rhetoric when every government professes its commitment to realising human rights. Human rights are norms that bind a society and governments derive their legitimacy from fulfilling them. The source of these rights is many — natural rights, divine rights, inherent rights of human beings or self-evidence. The American Declaration of Independence of 1776 considered these...

THE ongoing negotiations with the World Bank provide an opportunity to urban policymakers to reinvent the present form of JNNURM (called v1.0). Thus far JNNURM v1.0 has focused on upgrading macro-level dimensions of city’s environment, ignoring the social and economic diversity (e.g., mixed uses and building types) prevailing in urban areas. The top-down urban ‘renewal’ model underlying the present version of JNNURM is largely founded on the planning practices of...

The government will hand over the running of the rural job scheme to a nation-wide network of NGOs, sidelining the panchayats and gram sabhas that managed the programme till now. The official explanation is the “failure of the local-level political system” (sarpanches) in running the UPA’s flagship social programme that is mired in allegations of corruption and inefficiency. Many NGOs had been monitoring the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme but now they...

The UPA is in damage control mode over allegations that Indian officials took millions of dollars as bribes to help American companies secure government contracts. Five ministries are investigating specific charges of bribery against their officials, after the Indian ambassador to the US wrote a letter to the Centre. The Agriculture Ministry has asked the CBI to investigate allegations that US-based Dow Chemicals paid $ 200,000 to register 3 of...

Greenpeace, in collaboration with several civil society organisations, has launched a peoples’ campaign against ‘genetically contaminated food.’ The idea is to get thousands of citizens to write and send faxes to the Union Environment Minister Jairam Raesh before a high-powered government committee called the GEAC approves commercial cultivation in India of Bt brinjal.   The activists believe that urgent action is required before the process of contaminating our food supply...