-Down to Earth World is moving towards natural capital as a measure of economic growth After using gross domestic product, or GDP, as the universal measurement of economy for six decades, the world has begun looking beyond this gold standard for measuring a country’s economy. On May 25, 10 African countries agreed to incorporate their natural capital, or value of their natural resources, into their national accounts to make better economic decisions. The...

-The Business Standard Census details show spread of mobiles, TVs, bank accounts, even in poverty-stricken states household power connections still a big lack The past decade has seen the weakest sections of the society make rapid gains in their material wellbeing, acquiring assets such as cell phones, televisions, two-wheelers and bank accounts, though almost half the population of scheduled castes and tribes (SC and ST) continue to live by the light...

-The Telegraph The government today admitted that almost 95 per cent of the job to repair Aila-ravaged embankments in the Sunderbans was unfinished because of land-related problems, a lapse that will leave seven lakh families living in South and North 24-Parganas vulnerable to floods during the monsoon. The government was supposed to build 263km of concrete embankments by March this year but managed only 14km, primarily because of problems over land acquisition,...

Past two months saw B D Sharma negotiating release of high-profile hostages by the Maoists in Odisha and Chhattisgarh. TV viewers saw and heard Sharma, probably for the first time. Widely respected in the civil society, he has been championing the rights of tribals for four decades now. He served as collector in the undivided Bastar district of Chhattisgarh in the 1970s, after which he quit the Indian Administrative Service....

Government should consider a freeze on mining in Naxal-hit areas, tribal affairs minister V Kishore Chandra Deo has said. Deo clarified that he was not against the industry or economic development, but unresolved land rights and mining were principle causes of alienation among tribals. This gave Maoists a toe-hold to exercise control over the area and local population. “To a certain extent, unrest among the tribal population can be traced to...