As far as natural resources like minerals, land and water are concerned, Jharkhand is among the richest States of India. Yet, its people are among the poorest. Mind you, almost 30 per cent of them are tribal. Out of the total population of 288.46 lakhs, 223.1 lakhs live in rural areas and only 65.36 lakhs are urban dwellers. Even a cursory glance is sufficient to convince that most of the...

At a time when farmers across the country have been agitating against acquisition of their land for developmental works, a delegation from Delhi’s villages called on Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and presented to her a resolution offering 540 bighas of land in the Ghumanhera village in Najafgarh for opening of a State university. The delegation, led by Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee general secretary Naresh Kumar and president of 360 Khap Palam...

In the Indian reform story, policies on land have been the least reformed one, said Ratan Tata on Monday. The Chairman of the Tata Group, whose company Tata Motors had to shift the production base for its Nano car from Singur in West Bengal to Sanand in Gujarat following continuous protests over land acquisition for the project, said political leaders should be able to strike the right balance in deciding...

The government’s bill to create a three-year diploma course to train “rural health practitioners” triggered protests from doctors today, who questioned the validity of such a diploma and threatened a statewide agitation. The West Bengal Health Regulatory Authority Bill will permit rural health practitioners with the three-year diplomas to treat patients in villages where qualified doctors don’t want to go. The health practitioners will not be called doctors, health minister Surjya Kanta...

The collapse of the Dubai dream is not without any implications; it may be an indication that the travails of finance capitalism are not over. GLOBAL capitalism is in a phase in which it must deal with the fruits of the overextension during the previous boom, and there is no doubt that this is going to be painful. The financial crisis in the United States and some other developed countries...