Marie Antoinette may or may not have deadpanned “let them eat cake” but the Bengal government could have tried saying “let them eat potato” in these times of price rise. But out went that opportunity — along with 7,000 bags or 4,200 tonnes of potatoes at Panagarh in Burdwan. In terms of cash, potato stocks valued at Rs 50 lakh rotted on the open ground today because of a dispute between a...

Also failed to notice how his predecessor misled the Prime Minister Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal might have termed the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG)'s calculation of loss to the exchequer from underpricing of 2G spectrum “utterly erroneous,” but he has completely ignored other scenarios presented by the auditor where new operators made crores by selling their stakes to global telecom giants or were themselves ready to pay more...

So why is the UPA hell-bent on killing its unique success story: the NREGA? Here's the inside narrative of the conspiracy. It took 47 days of a protest sit-in at Jaipur to make the state budge(1). It's notable that the objective of this protracted protest was not to coerce the Rajasthan government for an extra share of the state's resources, but to hold the government accountable to the Constitution and its...

In post-globalisation India, middle-class heroes are usually entrepreneurs who make a fast buck, stars that glitter brightly and talk glibly, cricketers who hit the ball hard. In an aspirational world of consumer goods, fine dining and malls, values such as service, integrity, simplicity are becoming rare. Perhaps that is why the story of Binayak Sen, the skilled doctor who turned his back on material success to work among the poor...

The debate on the climate negotiations, instead of discussing the nature of any policy shift, should define the national position and determine red lines for future negotiations. A new paradigm has emerged at Cancun. Instead of the multilaterally agreed emissions reduction targets of the Kyoto Protocol, there is now a shared target for all countries, where deep cuts in greenhouse gases are required according to science. Developed countries are to take...