The police action against Dalits in Paramakudi leaves indelible scars on the psyche of the oppressed people all over Tamil Nadu. The Tamil Nadu Police, in its modern avatar, reflects a glorious tradition of over a century and a half. It was the only force to embark on State-sponsored modernisation in the early 1990s which was pioneered by me during my first tenure as Chief Minister from 1991 to 1996....

-The Hindu   After the Jaitapur nuclear power project in Maharashtra, it is now the turn of the 2,000-MWe Kudankulam atomic plant in Tamil Nadu to run into serious opposition. As protests by local residents and activists intensified, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Monday urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to order the halting of the project until concerns and fears about the plant's safety were addressed. Hours later, Dr. Singh called up Ms....

Do agencies like the Ford Foundation push their own agenda through the NGOs they support? It’s often said, tongue in cheek, that India’s “shadow” government works out of the nondescript, low-slung buildings abutting the Lodhi Garden in Delhi. That’s partly hubris, but it also stems from being close to the centre of power. This rarefied zone houses powerful “cultural” institutions like the India International Centre, as well as a host...

Interview with social activist and Team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal. THE organisational abilities of Arvind Kejriwal exhibited during the recent Jan Lokpal Bill movement earned him the sobriquet “Field Marshal of a peaceful agitation”. The social activist and Ramon Magsaysay Award winner played a significant role in conceiving the slogans, the symbolism and the trajectory of the movement. He is credited with anticipating some of the moves of the government...

A mysterious death in Raipur hospital reveals routine cross-border raids in A.P. by Chhattisgarh police They lock the door when a post-mortem is under way, but the smell of death seeps through the exhaust vents of the mortuary at the Medical College Hospital in Raipur. Outside the morgue, a pack of dogs sniffed the air experimentally; inside, the corpse of Gangraj, a middle-aged Adivasi man lay in body bag in a...