Interview with Joan Mencher, an anthropologist who has worked in India for long on issues such as agriculture, ecology and caste.   JOAN P. MENCHER is a Professor emerita of Anthropology from the City University of New York’s Graduate Centre and Lehman College of the City University of New York. She is the chair of an embryonic not-for-profit organisation, The Second Chance Foundation, which works to support rural grass-roots organisations...

Corporate governance codes work only where firms believe working in a legal, ethical and transparent fashion also means good business. It is not in dispute that good corporate governance is all about commitment of a company to run its businesses in a legal, ethical and transparent manner, and that the tone must be set at the top. But are companies in India convinced that good business is all about good corporate...

Seeking to set at rest reports of differences with two key negotiators of the Indian team over the country offering unilateral concessions without obtaining any reciprocity and attempts to water down the Prime Minister’s per capita approach, Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said on Sunday that he held “discussions with them, and they continued to be [a] valued part of the negotiating team to guide us...

The recently enacted Right to Education Act, 2009 has extensively been debated in the media, civil society and academic palaver. Mainstream also intervened in the debate, and to the best of my recollection, published two pieces: first, a rather elaborate one by Muchkund Dubey on September 19, 2009, and thereafter by N.A. Karim on October 3, 2009. While entirely endorsing the views expressed in these two articles and sharing the...

FIVE HOURS’ bus ride from Kolkatta, just past the railway crossing at Beldanga, is a dilapidated concrete structure covered in half-torn posters variously advertising a Marxian utopia, films for red-blooded adults and bedroom advice for couples intent on children. Inside, in a tiny, dank room behind a desk, sits someone the Queen of England knows by name – and you should too. Lanky, awkward and at 16, the possessor of...