The latest Human Development Report, or HDR, (2010), marking its 20th anniversary, is both remarkable and useful. Remarkable because it brims with intellectual confidence, born out of a sense of vindication over the “conceptual brilliance and continued relevance” of Mahbub ul-Huq’s original human development paradigm set out in the first sentence of the 1990 report — “People are the real wealth of nations.” The idea of human development, which, through...

Several newspapers and TV channels, some of them among India’s biggest, have claimed credit for exposing the Adarsh society scam in which the who’s who of India’s defense and political establishment are involved. The scam exposes the nexus between bureaucrats, politicians and unscrupulous defense service officers. Obviously it wouldn’t be anyone’s ‘exclusive’ if so many newspapers and channels broke the news. Or else there would be one journalist who reported...

An inter-state tussle triggered by a national issue has brought to light how amnesia has afflicted the Orissa government. Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik had demanded three days ago that a public hearing should be held in villages that will be affected by the proposed Polavaram hydel project in neighbouring Andhra. Documents available with The Telegraph suggest that the same Naveen government had a year ago rejected a request by Andhra to...

POSCO wants to build a USD 12 billion steel mill in eastern India, but the project has faced delays because of Environmental worries and protests by local residents concerned about the mill's impact on their agriculture-based livelihoods. Here are some questions and answers about the project, which has already been delayed by three years: What is the project? The world's third-largest steel company wants to set up a mill in the eastern state...

Making fresh demand for withdrawal of clearances accorded to Posco's mega steel plant, Left parties today sought shifting of the project from the proposed site near Paradip to any nearby place in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district. The demand was made before the Union Environment minister Jairam Ramesh when a delegation of the Left parties including CPI, CPI(M), Forward Bloc along with RJD and Samajwadi Party, met him at New Delhi. In a joint...