First food: business of taste
Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it
India
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A question of control
Karnataka's new panchayati raj law has sparked a debate, with the Congress government saying it gives the people more power and opposition politicians contending it does not.
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Chaotic reports
Swarms of locusts that descended over Rajasthan about two months ago seem to have played havoc not only with standing crops but with the flow of information as well: there is hardly any assertion
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Then and now: How the two panchayat acts differ
Under the 1983 act, the panchayati raj structure consisted of four tiers gram sabha, mandal panchayat, taluka panchayat samiti and zillah parishads. The mandal panchayat and zillah parishad were elected bodies with executive functions. Between these tw
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Cargil abandons plant
The American multinational company Cargill Inc has abandoned a proposal to establish a $15-million salt manufacturing unit near Kandla port in Gujarat. The decision came on the eve of a satyagraha
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...than the old one?
Under the 1983 act, the village assembly the lowest level of panchayati raj, from where the primary inputs for development should have come was the most neglected.
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Indicted by self
In a severe indictment of the World Bank's (WB) record of resettlement of people affected by its projects in India, the bank's own Operations Evaluation Division (OED) has recommended that funding of
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Upholding the right to hygiene
The citizens of Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh continue to put up with a filthy, malodorous town despite a landmark Supreme Court ruling 13 years ago, which held it mandatory for municipalities to provide sanitation facilities.
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Delayed recognition
Three years ago, an Orissa engineer's claims to have solved Fermat's Last Theorem was ignored by the state government. However, news that Andrew Wiles of the US has solved the long-standing puzzle
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Global lungs or firewood for the poor?
Indiscriminate felling of trees to meet human and animal needs is not only depleting India's forest wealth at an alarming rate, but also increasing global warming. But as India's share of global carbon dioxide emissions is minuscule, are not the interests
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A tradition that got washed away
For more than a century, the people of Motepur used to build an earthen dam on the Punpun river every two years. Today, wage labour has replaced voluntary service and a cement dam threatens to blot out a unique water harvesting system.