Who is a civil society member? This question, which has intrigued me for more than 20 years, came up again with the organization of the demonstrations in support of the lok pal bill in Delhi and other metropolitan cities. When I asked a friend who had been with the demonstrators at Jantar Mantar about the social composition of the gathering, he said that they were common people from every walk...

A transparent assessment of the costs and risks associated with India's ambitious nuclear plans must be made before any ground is broken at Jaitapur or elsewhere. You really have to hand it to the nuclear industry. In any other sphere of the economy, a major industrial disaster is likely to have adverse, long-term financial consequences for the company or companies whose product or activity was involved in the accident, regardless of...

Campaign against Bhushans seen as a bid to scuttle proposed Bill Prashant Bhushan has appeared for social causes without charging any fees: NAPM “His voice against Operation Green Hunt has also raised hackles in certain quarters” Even as the Union Finance Minister and chairman of the joint drafting committee on Lokpal Bill, Pranab Mukherjee, said over the weekend that the controversy surrounding some panel members would not impact the formulation of the Bill,...

Campaign against Bhushans seen as a bid to scuttle the formulation of the same Even as the Finance Minister and chairman of the joint drafting committee on Lokpal Bill, Pranab Mukherjee, said on Friday that the controversy surrounding some panel members would not impact the formulation of the Bill, several civil society groups and organisations condemned the smear campaign as an attempt to scuttle the proposed Bill. The National Alliance of People's...

A decline of 2.6 million in elementary education enrolments from 2007 to 2010, the years of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan's trumpeted success, needs careful analysis. Enrolment data, based on school statistics, deals with the supply-side only. Census or NSS data , based on household information, gives us the demand-side of school enrolments. The two should roughly match, as they do in half of India, but not for UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh,...