Maintaining his pro-Adivasi approach, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Monday said the time had come to make changes in the country's economic policy keeping the interests of the Adivasi population in view. “Though the country has achieved enough economic progress, the benefit of our economic policy has not reached the Adivasi people so far. The injustice done to the Adivasis needs to be corrected with concern and care,” Mr....

School texts that teach young minds that politics is a contentious and critical but reasonable activity, that it is not merely a set of demands and commands, and that politicians have to be responsive and accountable are naturally disliked by the political class. This is the tone of all the Political Science textbooks of Standards IX-XI brought out after 2006. The nurturing of a culture of critical public opinion seems...

By not resolving the definition of ‘public purpose,' the Land Acquisition Bill keeps the door open for misuse It has taken more than 110 years for the government to draft a new Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill. But despite mounting evidence of widespread misuse of government authority in taking over farm land and the increasing protests against the legal ambiguity that abets such exploitative practices, the revised legislation remains dubiously...

The environment ministry is on an industrial overdrive, with rules being changed for faster clearance of projects at the cost of the environment. While the standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife will lose its power to examine projects in tiger and elephant corridors, a sectoral forest advisory committee will be allowed to decide on diversion of forest land and projects even in dense forests. These are some of the...

-The Hindu Not too happy with the implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, Union Tribal Affairs Minister V. Kishore Chandra Deo has asked the State governments to address several lacunae in the law while implementing it at the ground level. “If a clear signal is given to implementing authorities that all rights of forest dwellers must be adhered to and that the democratic...