Stunned villagers are finding that governments have been leasing land, often for decades. The half-dozen strangers who descended on this remote West African village brought its hand-to-mouth farmers alarming news: their humble fields, tilled from one generation to the next, were now controlled by Libya's leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and the farmers would all have to leave. “They told us this would be the last rainy season for us to cultivate our...

FOLLOWING a Frontline Cover Story (“Driven to despair”, October 8) that highlighted the factors contributing to the high incidence of suicide among migrant workers and their family members in Tirupur in Tamil Nadu, the Central government set up a team to look into the issue. The team's visit to the knitwear capital of India on November 30 has raised the hopes of workers, trade union functionaries and labour rights activists.Headed...

Recently an interesting article appeared in The New York Times on how after the completion of a social audit at Nagarkurnool in Andhra Pradesh, villagers punished a local official for swindling funds allocated to the central government's flagship project, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme. The irate villagers tied the official's hands and paraded him around the neighbouring villages. This is not a one-off incident; similar accounts have...

One person in four worldwide paid bribe during the past year while 54 per cent Indians said they greased the palms of authorities to get things done, says a study released on Thursday to mark International Anti-Corruption Day."Corruption has increased over the last three years, say six out of 10 people around the world, and one in four people report paying bribes in the last year," the Berlin-based non-governmental agency,...

Mexico is making some last-ditch efforts at a consensus President of the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Patricia Espinosa on Wednesday decided to constitute smaller groups headed by ministers to discuss contentious issues at the climate change conference, a move which backfired when Bolivia walked out during one of the ministerial meetings.The host, Mexico, is making some last ditch efforts at...