THE Indian Bureau of Mines, in its Indian Minerals Yearbook–2005, notes that Chhattisgarh has 28 different types of minerals, with coal and iron ore being the most abundant. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), in its comprehensive book Rich Lands, Poor People: Is ‘Sustainable' Mining Possible?, says that around 16 per cent of India's coal reserves, 10 per cent of its iron-ore reserves, 5 per cent of its limestone...

By noon daily, the reception area of Surya Clinic in Muzaffarpur district of Bihar begins to fill up. Patients admitted for gyanecological care are clothed in the blue robes of the hospital and ushered into clean rooms with freshly made beds. At the state-run primary health centre (PHC) in Bochahan block of Muzaffarpur, which also offers family planning services, disposable gloves are washed and re-used and rusted beds are covered with...

Chanchala Devi always wanted a house. Not a mud-and-stick hut, like her current home in this desolate village in the mineral-rich, corruption-corroded state of Jharkhand, but a proper brick-and-mortar house. When she heard that a government program for the poor would give her about $700 to build that house, she applied immediately. As an impoverished day labourer from a downtrodden caste, she was an ideal candidate for the grant. Yet she...

The contrast between the disasters, more than a quarter-century and half a world apart, could not be starker. In 1984, a leak of toxic gas at an American company’s Indian subsidiary killed thousands, injured tens of thousands more and left a major city with a toxic waste dump at its heart. The company walked away after paying a $470 million settlement. The company’s American chief executive, arrested while in India, skipped...

Three men went missing in Indian-administered Kashmir in April. Nothing extraordinary about that, but some time later their bodies were discovered near the Line of Control (LoC), which separates Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir - a fate which militants trying to cross the border often meet. But during investigations, the police discovered that the men had been killed in a staged gun battle in a frontier area. The probe also revealed that a senior...