A Supreme Court judgment projects the historical thesis that India is largely a country of old immigrants and that pre-Dravidian aborigines, ancestors of the present Adivasis, rather than Dravidians, were the original inhabitants of India. If North America is predominantly made up of new immigrants, India is largely a country of old immigrants, which explains its tremendous diversity. It follows that tolerance and equal respect for all communities and sects are...

India’s food inflation accelerated for the fifth straight week to the highest in more than a year, reinforcing fears it will spill over to broader prices and pile pressure on the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to tighten monetary policy. Unseasonal rains have pushed up prices of vegetables such as onions and tomatoes in recent weeks, and the authorities are bracing to live with elevated price levels in the near term. Onion...

Food price index rose 14.44 per cent while the fuel price index climbed 11.63 per cent in the year to December 18, government data on Thursday showed. In the prior week, annual food and fuel inflation stood at 12.13 per cent and 10.74 per cent respectively. The primary articles price index was up 17.24 per cent in the latest week compared with an annual rise of 15.35 per cent a week earlier. The...

Indian civil society was dismayed and horror-struck when human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen, who has spent over three decades caring for the poor in tribal areas of central India, was sentenced to life imprisonment for ‘sedition’ along with two others, Piyush Guha and Narayan Sanyal by a Raipur Sessions Court judge.  Protests are taking place everywhere in the country and the members of India’s vibrant civil society, peoples’ movements,...

Continuing with its trend towards moderation, inflation declined to 7.48 per cent in November, mainly boosted by lowering of pressure on certain food items.Inflation had stood at 8.58 per cent in October. It was 4.50 per cent in November 2009. For September this year, the inflation figure has been revised upwards to 8.93 per cent from the provisional number of 8.62 per cent.This is the fourth consecutive month when the...