Lobbyist Niira Radia , who’s in the eye of major storm over her taped telephonic conversations with a wide variety of people, including politicians, Corporates and journalists, was on Tuesday grilled by the CBI over her alleged involvement in swinging commercial deals which smacked of a quid pro quo. A three-member CBI team subjected Radia to an intense questioning at her Chhatarpur farmhouse in south Delhi this morning. The interrogation, which...

Retail giants pushing the European Union-India free trade deal promise consumers a "new and dynamic retail experience" but ignore the fate of India’s "mom-and-pop" stores and some 40 million people they employ. Four years in the making, the EU-India Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement made serious headway during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Brussels Dec. 10 and is due to be signed and sealed early 2011. But the negotiations have...

Manish Kunjam , a former MLA and president of All India Adivasi Mahasabha, the tribal front of the CPI, is the only politician in Bastar who continues to organise Adivasis peacefully for their constitutional rights. Jyoti Punwani spoke to Kunjam about doing politics while facing police repression and Naxal violence: After a long gap, Chhattisgarh recently witnessed two massiveAdivasirallies.What were your demands? The Chhattisgarh government is running under the writ...

A working group on agriculture constituted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has suggested that the government provide farm loans to farmers at four per cent interest rate, raise the minimum support price (MSP) for farm produce to 50 per cent higher than the actual cost of cultivation and expand diesel subsidy scheme across the country.The Working Group on Agriculture Production headed by Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda submitted its...

Since the last few years, Prashan Bhushan, senior lawyer, has fired up the Indian political scene through his missionary legal practice.In the legal fraternity he is a loner because he is, always, on the wrong side of the power set up in New Delhi. In fact, when one meets the slow and soft-speaker, he hardly looks like a lawyer who is capable of shaking-up the government and its cronies.But, his...