-The Times of India CUTTACK/BHUBANESWAR: Thousands of twin city dwellers on Friday made a beeline for shops to stock up on vegetables and dry food. The mad rush LED to a steep rise in prices of chura (flattened rice ), potatoes and candles. Soon they vanished from the market. "I bought a kg of chura for Rs 28. In the evening the shopkeeper hiked the rate to Rs 45 a kg. I...

-The Hindu The role of education in reducing poverty is widely recognised but our planners are yet to realise how the impoverished struggle with a learning process that is unresponsive to their needs In a society where poverty is far more common than prosperity, one would expect the implications of poverty for education to be widely recognised. What we find, instead, is that poverty is seldom mentioned directly in policy documents on...

-The Indian Express Eight years may seem like a short stretch to appraise a landmark law such as the Right To Information Act, especially in a large and diverse country such as India. But the transparency law enacted on October 12, 2005, has managed to leave its imprint in this short period, becoming a new weapon in the hands of people. Not only has the RTI act been used to know more about...

-Outlook The faecal matter hits the rotary blades, politically-but we're still staring at a sanitation disaster "Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate mostly besides the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover." -V.S. Naipaul An Area of Darkness, 1964 Not...

-Economic and Political Weekly   Much work remains to be done if the new Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act has to mark a meaningful shift for India's adivasi communities. Chitrangada Choudhury (chitrangada@csds.in) Chitrangada Choudhury (chitrangada@csds.in) is a multimedia journalist and researcher, and currently with the Publics and Policies program at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. Among the worst excesses committed in India's six decade-old democracy, the forcible displacment...