It is imperative that the committee constituted to look into charges of corruption in the Commonwealth Games should also include violations of labour laws within its purview. One of the more blatant and visible scams of the recently concluded Commonwealth Games relates to how the thousands of workers who worked on the games construction sites were denied minimum wages, safety equipment, housing and other benefits constitutionally due to them. In an interview...

India has fallen three places to 87th in Transparency International's latest Corruption Perceptions Index, in which 178 countries were surveyed. India's integrity score has fallen to 3.3 out of 10 in 2010 while it was 3.5 in 2007 and 3.4 in 2008 and 2009. Transparency International India chairman P.S. Bawa on Tuesday said the recent damaging revelations in the Commonwealth Games contracts seems to have increased the perception about corruption and...

Both Posco and the Orissa government said there were no tribals on the land for Posco’s 12 mn tonne steel plant. The presence of 21 tribals in the voters list has hit their credibility and probably the plant as well A 4-member environment ministry committee has recommended that the environmental clearances given to Posco be revoked for the violation of existing laws, for serious lapses and suppression of facts. As always,...

The genetic diversity of the plants that we grow and eat and their “wild relatives” could be lost forever, threatening future food security, unless special efforts are stepped up to not only conserve but also utilize them, especially in developing countries. This is one of the key messages of the second report on The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, launched today by FAO.   The...

Fifty-five thousand metric tonnes of food grains rotted in Punjab alone and thousands of tonnes more across the nation. The pictures of rotting grains might have shocked us, but not Adesh Pratap Singh, the Food Minister of Punjab and certainly not Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The documents accessed by CNN-IBN through an RTI revealed that this rot was expected. A copy of a letter by Punjab's...