So what caused the French Revolution? Food prices did. A hailstorm destroyed French crops, food prices rose 88 per cent in one year, and hungry Parisians turned on their rulers. Ditto with the Tian-an-men showdown exactly 200 years later, in 1989: consumer prices rose 21 per cent in a country that had known virtually no inflation under Communist rule. The Suharto regime got overthrown in Indonesia in 1998 after food...

In a country where imperfect access to information lies at the heart of many inequalities, allowing a legitimate and safe pursuit of information should be the most basic aspect of an inclusive society What do India’s Right to Information (RTI) mechanism and WikiLeaks have in common? Prima facie, both are standard bearers of transparency in public life, working to promote freedom of information and the citizens’ right to know. In doing...

Almost a year after the state government promised to impose stringent laws to arrest the exploitation of farmers at the hands of private moneylenders, the rate of borrowing has gone up to 36-40% in the state. The laws remain on paper as the government has failed to put in place any regulatory body that could take action against the private moneylenders in the state. Highly-placed sources in the government said, “The...

The Environment Ministry's clearance of projects such as Posco, Jaitapur and Lavasa will cause havoc in our gravely endangered environment. EVEN the worst pessimist could not have imagined that the January 31 order of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) approving the South Korean-origin company Posco's steel project in Orissa would be as bad as it actually is. Construction of the Rs.54,000-crore steel plant, its captive power unit and private...

The Supreme Court today hauled up the government for including soft drink industry representatives on food standard panels intended to act on complaints against them and asked it to immediately reconstitute the committees with independent experts. The top court has since 2004 been hearing a PIL filed by the NGO CPIL, which demanded that soft drink companies reveal the contents of their products, including pesticide and chemical contents, if any. In 2006,...