It was a classic case of David turning into Goliath almost overnight. Less than two days after the environment ministry rejected Vedanta’s bid to mine bauxite in the Niyamgiri hills of Orissa, the odds swung heavily in favour of the ancient Dongria Kondh tribe when Rahul Gandhi congratulated them on their victory and promised to stand shoulder to shoulder with them in their fight against injustice. In the process, he...

A RESEARCHER WORKING on the State of Panchayats Report (SOPR) 2008-09 met Mahangu Madiya in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district, a dangerous place for gathering data. Madiya’s story was startling. In January, he was given Rs 55 lakh compensation for his land, but the amount is sitting in his bank account. He does not even own a mobile phone. “I am concerned with farming. My land is important to me. What will I...

Judging by the television news that night, May 20, 2010, was a day like any other — marked by natural disaster (a cyclone predicted for Orissa), violent rebellion (the blowing up of railway tracks by Maoists in Bihar), political partisanship (the insistence by Mamata Banerjee that the Union railways minister would be of her party even if she soon moved, as she hoped, to become chief minister of West Bengal),...

YELLING dementedly, seven lawmakers mobbed the chairman of the Indian parliament’s upper house on March 8th and tore at the document, containing the women’s reservation bill, he was reading from. Yet the bill passed the next day, with the two-thirds majority needed to change India’s constitution. With broad political support, including from the Congress party that leads India’s coalition government and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the bill...

The government needs to allocate more funds for public health. The mismatch between the declared objective of universal healthcare through the public health system and the actual level of expenditure remains serious.  One of the three most important planks on which Barak Obama won the U.S. presidential election was the country’s healthcare system, which he promised to fix. Indeed, the most important legislative measure initiated by Mr. Obama so far...