Even as it pursues its case to make Dow Chemical pay for the clean-up of the Bhopal gas leak site, the Centre has decided to spend about Rs. 250 crore towards complete remediation. The entire process of decontaminating the one million tonnes of toxic waste at the site will be completed in two to three years, according to sources at the fourth meeting of the current Group of Ministers (GoM) on...

The Supreme Court on May 7 ruled that natural resources were national assets that belonged to the people and were ideally exploited by public sector undertakings. This obviously implies that local communities, including tribals, living on mineralised land, enjoy entitlements but not prescriptive ownership rights to such national assets. This is an important reiterative clarification defining mineral rights in Fifth Schedule areas that are currently in contention. Whether PSUs should...

THE NATIONAL Advisory Council ( NAC) headed by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi has scored its first victory — a change in the proposed Food Security Bill that raises the monthly allocation of foodgrains to the poor from 25 kg to 35 kg at Rs 3 a kilo. The draft Bill, approved by the empowered group of ministers ( EGoM) recently, had offered 25 kg of foodgrains to those below the poverty...

Free from harvesting Palvinder Singh is a happy man. This year his wheat harvest was up to his expectation and as a gesture of thanks giving, he, along with other farmers of a village near Sirhind are offering sweet water to people. He says this year his input cost was less and output more, which means he has made a profit of more than Rs 10,000 from his one acre...

Two years of drought has started to take its toll on the people of Vidarbha, with a failed crop leaving them with no income to tide over the crisis. He's a butcher out of business. “I want to shift to a town like Panderkauda,” says Sarfaraz Qureshi in Yavatmal district. “I'm unable to sell any meat in the villages I work in.” Qureshi is a small operator who carries as...