The battle for knowledge

If tariffs were the big-ticket issue of trade disputes in an earlier decade, intellectual property rights (IPRs) are making for all the drama, standoffs and skulduggery in international negotiations today.

Access to justice curbed

A bill to create a green tribunal was tabled in the Lok Sabha on July 31. Will it ease the burden of courts like the government claims? Lawyers and activists Sumana Narayanan spoke to believe the bill in its present form will centralize legal recourse to environmental matters Sanjay Parikh, Advocate, Delhi The bill talks of the tribunal dealing with "substantial questions relating to environment". This is defined as when there is a direct violation of law

Bring back the social sector, but not interventionist planning

in may 2004, India had a new government at the Centre. Bangalore and Hyderabad, the two boroughs of shining India, saw their chief ministers eat humble pie at the hustings. An India not very often visible--farmers, workers and landless laborers--made its presence felt. The elections brought the United Progressive Alliance (upa). It spelt doom for India's economy. Or so our economic orthodoxy told us.

India's economic growth is shortsighted

with the Indian economy growing at a breathtaking pace, the urban Indian consumer has never had it so good. There are more cars, more ipods, more mobile phones than what anybody could have imagined 15 years ago. Fuelled by rising advertising revenues, the media is focused only on phenomenal growth in consumption. It fails to see the underbelly of rapid industrialisation.

Is social sector revenue or capital expenditure?

THE centre's commitment to targets stipulated by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003, threatens to set it on a collision course with states. The matter at hand is funding social sector projects. Going by discussions on preparation of the Union budget 2007-2008, the centre seems to have made up its mind to ask state governments to share expenses for social sector schemes. It's a prospect which states don't like.

Science congress is a jamboree

Avoid using caste names for India's beasts

Pete Seeger the new middle class icon?

the Indian middle class has come of age. Quite literally so. The motor car, that epitome of middle class aspirations, is no longer a dream. Of course, that automobile is also not the lumbering Ambassador of yore.

Petty squabbles signify ill for the forest rights question

the issue of rights over and the management of forestland, never less than contentious, has triggered off another round of unseemly bickering this time between the Supreme Court and the Central Empowered Committee appointment by it, on the one hand, and the Union ministry of environment and forests (moef) on the other. The battle, on the face of it, looks suspiciously like a turf war.

Left in peace (L.I.P.)

mamata is on fast. Medha is arrested. Marxists are on a march to the market. Over some motorcars. It is very difficult to stick to any ideology while you are in the quicksand of market. For some time now in Indian politics, the Left managed to give the impression to be on the side of people.