The undersigned demand that the plan to link the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to Aadhaar (or UID) be revoked immediately. This is an extremely dangerous move that threatens to cause havoc in MGNREGA's fragile structure. The Ministry of Rural Development has put out a tender (dated October 11, 2010) worth Rs.2,162 crore to engage “service providers” for MGNREGA under a “public private partnership” model. The contract includes...

A meticulous study of the agrarian relations in three villages. ONE of our senior sociologists once drew my attention to the distinction between economics and other Social Sciences. Other Social Sciences – sociology and anthropology, for instance – he said, pay a great deal of attention to gathering primary data and interpreting them, whereas economics relies on secondary data for its analysis. This is, to a large extent, a fair...

While renewable energy was always considered more desirable from the point of view of environment protection, its importance has increased several times in these times of climate change. Solar energy is particularly seen as a very promising source in energy planning for the future in tropical countries like India. Interest in realising the potential of solar energy is fast increasing and organisations which have been pioneers in solar energy are...

ASSAM is on the brink of a movement, like the one that ended with the 1984 Assam Accord. This time the concern is not illegal immigrants but dams proposed upstream in Arunachal Pradesh. In the past year and a half people in Assam have held a number of protests. The latest one was on September 10 when Union Minister of Environm ent and Forests Jairam Ramesh visited Guwahati to consult academics,...

Finally, India’s science academies have broken their silence and said that GM crops should be an important part of technology mix, which is crucially needed to improve India’s agriculture. The report entitled Inter-Academy Report on GM Crops was submitted to the Union government earlier this week. The combined wisdom of the six academies of sciences in the country was long time coming. It is this kind of scientific advice (voice) that...