Attacking the United Progressive Alliance government and the Environment Ministry for granting clearance to the Posco project in Orissa, the Communist Party of India on Thursday said the imposition of 60 conditions, notwithstanding, neither the environment nor forest clearance for it was in accordance with law. “The government enacts laws and frames policies that it claims will benefit the people, and then goes on to tear them to shreds in order...

The incarceration of Binayak Sen reminded me of the sophist philosopher Thrasymachus's definition of justice in Plato's Republic. Challenged by Socrates to define justice he says: "I proclaim that might is right, and justice is in the interest of the stronger...The different forms of government make laws, democratic, aristocratic, or autocratic, with a view to their respective interests; and these laws, so made by them to serve their interests, they...

Women in rural India continue to die because of indifference and neglect by healthcare authorities... This is a public health warning. Do not express concern for the state of healthcare in this country. Do not express anger that women die because they are either denied care or help is delayed when they have complicated pregnancies. Do not demand that healthcare is an entitlement that the poor have a right to demand...

Over 500 people under the banner of All Adivasi Students' Association of Assam (Aasaa) staged a four-hour dharna in the Lastgate area of Dispur on Thursday seeking an immediate halt to illegal eviction in the Lungsung forest area of Kokrajhar district. Shouting slogans like "stop illegal eviction in Lungsung" and "give us justice", the protesters alleged that the Congress-led government in the state has deprived them of the basic needs....

There is a new “plan” for the scheduled tribes, but the adivasis themselves will have no say. Alienation from the forest and its resources, alienation from cultivable land and alienation from the State underlie the anger of the adivasis in India’s heartland. This is not a new or startling observation. Adivasi mass organisations, the more sensitive administrators, political organisations with their ears to the ground and scholars who have studied India’s...