Arundhati has got it all wrong—the facts speak out against her romantic notions of the tribals’ fight Nirad C. Chaudhary wrote in The Continent of Circe that India’s tribals were mainly found in hill forests. This was because, he reasoned, they had been chased there by the invading Aryans, who displaced them from their river plains. In an essay published in this magazine (Capitalism: A Ghost Story, March 26), Arundhati Roy...

Travelling in rural India always yields rich insights into how poor women struggle to provide that little extra, in terms of food, for the family meal. It was in the village of Vijaypura – in the drought prone Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh – that I came across Bharati, a 39-year-old farm woman and homemaker, working her everyday magic by laying out slices of potato and whole green chillies on the...

The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) (MMDR) Bill, which seeks to replace a decades-old mining law, was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday, but may become law only by next year as a parliamentary committee is now expected to examine it over the next few months, a mines ministry official said. “The standing committee will be looking at the Bill. They might take two-three months to examine it,” said...

A new draft Bill holds much promise to augment the development delivery mechanism. It is the new mining Bill, 2011, which has specific provisions for earmarking funds for development purposes in the mineral-rich districts that happen to be the regions with high poverty ratios. Revamped mining legislation can boost transparency in the vexed sector that seems much prone to illegality, corruption and extensive fraud.  Further, a well-crafted mining law can actually...

While imposing a ban on mining in Karnataka’s Bellary district in July this year, the Supreme Court had reasoned that the massive environmental damage caused by excessive mining impinges on the constitutional right to life. In neighbouring Goa, the latest state rocked by a mining scandal, the destruction could be on an even larger scale if one compares mining figures and relates these to the areas of the large district and...