Is drought being used as an excuse to delay the national Food Security Act? An informal network of organizations and individuals involved in the Right to Food Campaign believe so. The campaign groups are demanding that a national consultative process on an improved draft bill must be started immediately so that the proposed Food Security Act could be passed as soon as possible. The campaigners also demand that exports of...

In a recent lecture, delivered in Mumbai in memory of Nani Palkhivala, the home minister, P. Chidambaram, attacked “left-leaning intellectuals” and “human rights groups”, who, in his view, “plead the naxalite cause ignoring the violence unleashed by the naxalites on innocent men, women and children”. “Why are the human rights groups silent?” asked the home minister. The short answer is that they aren’t, and haven’t been, silent. There are very...

What, you may ask, is common between potatoes, tomatoes, brinjal, chilli, datura, tobacco and the deadly nightshade (belladonna)? They all belong to a plant family called Solanaceae. The Solanaceae family contains a number of important agricultural plants as well as many psychoactive and toxic plants. Solanaceae species are rich in complex chemicals called alkaloids and contain some of the most poisonous plants known to mankind. They produce alkaloids in their...

A fact finding team of many civil society organizations has reported widespread occurrences of murders, tortures and cases of police atrocities in Chhattisgarh in the name of combating Naxalism. It is also being alleged that in the name of their own security, journalists are being stopped from going to so called “combat zones” where security forces have launched an Operation Greenhunt to flush out armed Maoists.  Fifteen members of the...

In a clear message to Maoists, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Wednesday that no sustained economic activity is possible under the shadow of gun in tribal areas where decades of alienation is taking a "dangerous" turn. He said there has been a "systemic failure" in giving tribals a stake in the modern economic processes and emphasised that the "systematic exploitation and social and economic abuse of our tribal communities...