The development laboratory

Last year, Congress chief minister Digvijay Singh lost the Madhya Pradesh (MP) state elections. Two years before, the Communist-led coalition lost in Kerala. Since both governments had fervently promoted decentralisation, questions naturally come to the fore: Was their defeat a vote against the move towards local governance and devolution of power? Further, if decentralisation does not bring electoral benefits, will politicians invest in this idea in the future? What went wrong in MP?

Die Grnen

in western Europe today, Green parties are an integral part of parliamentary politics; in Germany, whose case has been analysed here, the Green party is a ruling party in coalition governments in some provinces. But Green party politics was significant not for capturing power, but for being radical-ecological, alternative in style and content to all other parties and for standing in solidarity with the Third World.

Green has many shades

Subhas Datta, an environmental activist in Kolkata, is taking the initiative to launch Indias first organized green party. He has already been in touch with green party leaders in Europe and has been assured support and offered advice. Since the party is still at the concept stage, it is difficult to tell what will happen once it gets off the drawing boardin terms of manifesto, programme, constitution, organizational structure and areas of special focus.

Her majesty's pirates

The Pirate Party -- which won a surprise seat in the European Parliament in Sweden in May -- now has a UK chapter. The party, which campaigns to legalize non-commercial internet file-sharing and has branches in 25 European countries plans to contest the next general election in the UK. It gained more than seven per cent of the vote in Sweden on the

Goa continues to mine illegally

State government report stops short of taking action

Relief stalled

CPI(M)-Trinamul rivalry affects aid to cyclone Aila victims relief funds from the central government to help victims of cyclone Aila in West Bengal have hardly reached the needy. Political one-upmanship between the ruling cpi(m) in the state and Mamata Banerjee's Trinamul Congress, a coalition ally of the Congress party at the Centre, has stalled distribution of relief material.

Bound and gagged

Forget Maoists, West Bengal's Left Front has lost its social constituency through years of inaction The situation in Lalgarh in West Bengal's Midnapore district, still precariously poised, seems to have been overtaken by generous helpings of farce in nearby Kolkata and distant Delhi. Union Home Minister P Chidambaram kept urging West Bengal to ban Red ultras even as he

Voters retaliate with boycott

Denied rights, aggrieved citizens abstain from voting having lost their means to earn a living, communities are increasingly using their vote to drive home the message they distrust the State. Tribals who lost their agricultural land in a forest area because of faulty implementation of forest rights laws in Maharashtra

Political symptoms

Few states illustrate the socio-economic faultlines of India like Orissa--rich in natural resources but with half its population living below the poverty line. The old economy of fishers and farmers faces a new economy of extraction, dominated by the mining industry. Pitched battles have clear political overtones. As the state goes to the polls, Ashutosh Mishra visited a few zones of conflict Hirakud farmers v industry

FOSS on poll agenda

Broad consensus on use of open source software POLITICAL parties may have different ideologies, but when it comes to e-governance they seem to agree on the type of computer software the country needs. The Bharatiya Janata Party's (bjp) IT vision document, released on March 16, endorsed Free and Open Source Software (foss) that can drastically cut costs of computerization (see 'foss time in