-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...

-The Times of India Blog Prakash Singh, former IPS officer who also headed the Border Security Force, dealt with naxalism in its early stages. He continues to research the movement. In a conversation with Sugandha Indulkar, he shares his idea of urban naxalism. * What is urban naxalism? Urban naxalism, in simplest terms, implies naxalism as practised in urban areas by different shades of intellectuals – lawyers, journalists, writers, doctors, professors or people...

-The Telegraph 1 lakh farmers and farm labourers plan to march towards Parliament on November 30. But what do they want? Mumbai: We, who are not farmers, tend to think of farmers as a catch-all word. A word that signifies to us a people who work to cultivate something. I have no idea why. I can never see ‘journalists’, for instance, as a catch-all word, even if some others do. This is...

-The Hindu Environment Ministry and inland waterways body differed on need for clearances India’s longest waterway project, one terminal of which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week, was made possible only after a high-power Committee of Ministers and senior officials from multiple Ministries overruled the recommendations of experts appointed by the Environment Ministry. The latter had recommended public consultations and a full-fledged environment clearance, documents made available through...

-TheWire.in Most of the ‘reforms’ that are being introduced to address poor delivery of social services are silent on the issue of inadequate human resources, among other shortfalls in capacity. The poor performance of the public sector especially in education, health and other social services has been the subject of a lot of debates in the last few decades. The dominant narrative has attributed implementation failures to corruption, lack of accountability, poor...