Book review: Oil on the brain

Book review Towards water wisdom Limits, justice, harmony

This remarkable book attempts to showcase the essential features of India's--and to an extent the world's--water sector and point the way towards achieving equity and harmony in the use and sharing of our water resources.

Film review Birth In The Squatting Position

Commercial cinema, at least the variety common in this country, tends to show childbirth in a kind of half-light the mother screaming and blood flowing profusely. If the end is happy, a doctor enters with a scalpel and saves the woman. The baby is taken by its feet and smacked on its back to make it cry and everyone is happy.

Gang leader for a day, a rogue sociologist crosses the line

Extracts from 'Red Sun, Travels in Naxal Country'

"200 hardcore Maoists with some technical expertise can control vast areas across three districts?..It took only 19 radically converted young Islamist men to bring down the towers of the World Trade Centre....Numbers, I've told by many don't need to be large. They merely need to be effective..."

Book review: 'A quick travel through the countryside'

Limited agency

In the past thirty years, ngo participation in international environmental negotiations has increased. Peter Willetts, who has written extensively on ngos, sees the 1972 un environment conference in Stockholm as watershed in this respect. He says the event marked the beginning of a ''slow yet steady liberalization of the ngo system''.

Baiga agriculture can solve problems that plague modern systems

Demand charter from children for education, health sectors

A popular sociological theory has it that governments often ensure that education is not widely available as it is difficult to control an educated lot. This seems to be exactly what is happening in India. Nine per cent of the budget was promised for education and health in the ruling United Progressive Alliance's National Common Minimum Programme. The New-Delhi based-"Wada Na Todo Abhiyan" (keep your promise campaign) demands that the government deliver this.

Book review: Environmental issues in India

In an era where the environment and the intricate, and challenging, relationship between communities and natural resources has come to occupy a crucial space in the development debate in India, this volume couldn't have been timed better.