SEZs, touted as the silver bullet for India’s economic ambitions, appear to have lost their sheen as the Direct Tax Code threatens to withdraw the exemptions offered them. We have only just begun to realise how many thousands of crores of revenue have been forgone due to tax holidays granted to SEZs, says Manshi Asher, who secured some revealing statistics on this subject after invoking the RTI law. Read more »
Transferring 26% Of Mining Profits To Local Populations
The Indian government is thinking about giving local people a stake in the resources mined from their area by offering them 26% equity or payout of profits. But will government implement profit-sharing any more effectively than it implements the rehabilitation of the displaced? Read more »
‘We Are Seeing The Emergence Of A New Poor’
In 2000, world leaders from United Nations member states envisioned a new world for the third millennium and charted what came to be known as the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). In a candid interview, Minar Pimple, Deputy Director Asia, UN Millenium Development Goals Campaign, speaks to SHRIYA MOHAN about the significance of the 2009 G20 Summit and if the decisions taken will impact global poverty in these times of global economic slowdown. Read more »
The Poverty Of The Rich
GOING BY the peaks reached by the Sensex every time there is a natural calamity, the Indian stock market is in for exciting times, it seems. Echoing the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a recent report titled Hiding Behind the Poor by the environmental group Greenpeace states: “Changing rainfall patterns will result in intense flooding and severe droughts, melting glaciers will aggravate the problem of fresh water shortage. The intensity and frequency of cyclones… will increase, vector borne diseases will spread and rising sea-levels will eventually drown coastal low lying mega cities like Mumbai and Kolkata.” Read more »
Power Of New Nationalism
The spark that was lit in Tunisia has now spread the brushfire to four countries after consuming Egypt’s long-time president Hosni Mubarak. Coming days will show if the Tunisian uprising will become the Arab equivalent of the 1980 Gdansk strike in Poland that brought down the Soviet empire. Whether the embattled regimes in Yemen, Bahrain andLibya succeed in surmounting street challenge or not, the phoenix of new Arab nationalism emerging from the ashes of fallen regimes promises to radically alter the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East. Read more »
The Salt Demon’s Legacy
Once in a way, nature and chance converse briefly to produce a wonder. About 60,000 years ago, the deccan plateau had a visitor from outer space. A decently sized rock, seduced by the earth’s gravity and not completely eaten away by the angry friction from our planet’s atmosphere, came crashing down in the Buldana district of Maharashtra. Igneous rock met igneous rock and in the 6 megaton meeting was created a crater, 1.8 kilometers long and 150 meters deep. Read more »
Confining childhood in India
Do child rights activists need to step out of the boxes of ‘development’, ‘survival’, ‘protection’ and ‘participation’ into which they have confined India’s children? Do we need to interrogate child rights programming and the somewhat limiting notions of childhood around which it is built? Read more »
Growth And Other Concerns
AMARTYA SEN
A comparitive development saga of India to the rest of the world by Prof Amartya Sen.. Read more »
Sardar Sarovar Project, Canals of India Sagar & Omkareshwar and Jobat Dam Project
This publication is a report on Sardar Sarovar Project, Canals of India Sagar & Omkareshwar and Jobat Dam Project.
Source: India Peoples tribunal on Crime and Honor
Tales of Greed, Destruction And State’s Myopia
There have been gross violations of the rights of the poor, particularly tribal rights, which have reached unprecedented levels since the implementation of new economic policies of the 90s. The 5th Schedule Rights of the tribals, in particular the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act and the Forest Rights Act, have been grossly violated. These violations have now gone to the extent where fully tribal villages have been declared to be non-tribal. The entire executive and judicial administration appears to have been totally apathetic to their plight. It could well be the severest indictment of the State in the history of democracy anywhere, on account of the sheer number of people (tribals) affected and the diabolic nature of the atrocities committed on them by the State, especially the police, leave aside the irreversible damage to the environment. Read more »