The agitation against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant can be seen as a case of activism gone berserk. The high-octane drama against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) in Tamil Nadu has wound down. The seven-month-long agitation led by the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) at Idinthakarai village in Tirunelveli district, demanding the closure of the ready-to-be commissioned project, ended on March 27 when S.P. Udayakumar, PMANE convener, called off...

-Eastern Panorama   It’s been almost two months since a 6.9 magnitude earthquake left the Himalayan state of Sikkim devastated. Nine families of Ralak village in Tingchim Mangshilla Gram Panchayat in the North District of Sikkim are still living in make shift relief camps with the mothers cuddling their children under blankets to give them comfort and warmth in the cold November nights. As snow has already covered the mountains visible from...

Here in Delhi, you can buy a litre of petrol for a little less than Rs 69. A cylinder of cooking gas costsRs 405. But there's one state capital where petrol costs Rs 200 a litre and gas a staggeringRs 2,000 a cylinder. That city is Imphal, the capital of our easternmost state, Manipur. Since August 1, the state has been hostage to a withering siege: a blockage of two...

Jharkhand and the Centre today gave final shape to a plan that aims to improve the lives of 36,000 people living in Saranda forest. At a high-level meeting in Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh’s office, chief minister Arjun Munda discussed a time-bound strategy to implement the Saranda Action Plan. Ramesh said by November 10, Jharkhand would start appointing rozgar sevaks (employment facilitators) for each of the 56 villages in the area....

Nine villages with a combined population of 1,000 were out of the reach of the rescue effort in North Sikkim till this evening, injecting a fresh sense of urgency into a task force blasting past and working around boulders blocking roads in the region. The cut-off villages are located in Dzongu, the protected area of the Lepchas, the indigenous tribal community of Sikkim. The villages have been identified as Shipgyer, Bey,...