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 &NDAsh; sociology and anthropology, for instance &NDAsh; 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...

The new consumer price indices set to debut in January will be compilations of indices for states that reflect the price trends prevailing in the country accurately, helping policy formulation and targeted intervention. Each state will have two consumer price indices, one for rural and another for urban areas. These CPI rural and urban will be added up to arrive at urban and rural retail indices at the national level. These...

After nearly two decades of debate, governments from around the world today agreed to a new United Nations treaty on managing the planet’s wealth of genetic resources &NDAsh; from animals to plants to fungi &NDAsh; more fairly and systematically. The decision came on the last day of the two-week conference of parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan. The new pact, which is a protocol to the...

The Rs 51,000-crore Posco steel project in Orissa, that has been delayed for five years, faces the prospect of getting delayed further. The ministry of tribal affairs is now looking at the possibility of whether the South Korean steel project, which also represents the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) in India so far, has actually encroached into the land owned by tribals. The Union ministry of environment and forest (MoEF) has...

When India’s Forest Rights Act was passed in 2006, it was criticized by environmentalists who were concerned that it would undo the country’s wildlife reserves. On the flip side, tribal rights advocates were concerned that the people the law was really meant to help wouldn’t benefit. Since it came into effect in January 2008, India has blocked at least one megaproject &NDAsh; Vedanta’s bauxite mine in Orissa &NDAsh; on the grounds...