-NDTV.com The electricity workers are protesting against the privatisation of the electricity department. Chandigarh: Large parts of Chandigarh have been left without electricity and water for over 36 hours after a major power outage following a three-day strike by electricity department workers. Thousands of homes have been without power and water supply since Monday evening and traffic lights are not working in many areas in the city. Government hospitals have rescheduled surgeries. The Chandigarh...

-Counterview.net The people of Kendrapada district of Odisha are fighting peacefully for last two years to save their river Kharasrota. This river is the lifeline of farmers, fishing communities and other communities living besides the river. The Kharasrota river is the source of life and livelihoods for the people of Odisha in general and people of Kendrapada and Jajpur in particular. The successive governments have failed to provide safe drinking water to...

-TheIndiaForum.in The uniqueness of agriculture calls for continued & not less government intervention. Reform of Indian agriculture is needed, but this must be to enhance state capacities and strengthen regulatory oversight. What would be a “better government that is better”? Over the past 30-40 years, all over the world, the word “reform” has come to acquire a very specific meaning. Summed up as the Washington Consensus, it proposes reducing the role of...

-The Hindu Journalist-author Meena Menon on the crisis of cotton and why India needs to go back to desi varieties There’s a pithy summing up of Bt Cotton in Meena Menon’s 2018 article ‘A lost cotton heritage’. “Bt cotton is like Fair and Lovely,” Kamal Kishore Dhiran, an organic cotton farmer, tells the journalist and author. “Does it really change you or make you fair? Similarly Bt cotton doesn’t address the main...

-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...