The draft report of the Comptroller and Auditor General on the working of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was used by many sections of the media to strongly criticise this employment programme. Much of the coverage sensationalised the findings of the report. What did the CAG actually say? Where did the CAG fall short in its investigations?

The 1991 Coastal Regulation Zone Notification is to be replaced by rules based on a new concept called the Coastal Management Zone. This article, after discussing the proposed CMZ notification, points out several problem areas, particularly, for traditional fishing communities. The article also discusses ideas to address these issues.

Hundreds of migrant adivasis from Madhya Pradesh have died from acute silicosis (caused by inhaling silica) contracted while working in quartz crushing factories in central Gujarat. Thousands more face the same fate.

Subject to the approval of the shareholders and the usual regulatory and statutory rubber stamps, India's largest pharmaceutical company, Ranbaxy Laboratories, is expected, by the end of March 2009 to become a subsidiary of Daiichi Sankyo, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies of Japan.

I can still remember how people were dancing and kicking at the bamboo cordons and shouting "Posco Go Back', when we reached Balitutha, near Parikud in Orissa on April 1, 2008. People from many parts of the state, especially from the scene of anti-displacement struggles (including Kalinga Nagar), had joined the local people and the gathering was huge. Exactly four months earlier, on December 1, 2007, I had seen the same people demonstrate when I reached Dhinkia, the first village to be displaced by the Posco steel project. (Letter)

National Sample Survey data in Income, Expenditure and Productive Assests of Farmer Households, 2003 showed that 96 per cent of farmer households are in deficit and half of the households are indebted. Debt waiver can only be welcomed in such a situation. Once indebted, marginal and small farmers will hardly be in a position to repay the debt even if it is from institutional sources where interest rates are much lower than the rates charged by private moneylenders. (Letters)

Many aspects of the Indian scientific development are extremely unsatisfactory, lacking in both quality and quantity. Although the outreach of teaching and research programmes has increased considerably, populist political themes are favoured and special institutions have been created where research is undertaken independent of the university system. This article reviews the present scene in science education, and identifies the major problems and the challenges confronting the institutions involved in education and research.

The development agenda of the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development has undergone modifications that are unfavourable for developing nations. Can the recent Accra Accord change this? How can UNCTAD be better enabled to address critical development issues?

With lobbying going on to replace cooked meals in the mid-day meal programme with processed foods like biscuits, this article reports on a consultation earlier this year that saw academicians, medical professionals, and nutrition and public health experts discuss the impact of providing dry rations versus cooked foods.

Despite substantial decentralisation of power through panchayati raj institutions in West Bengal, the presence of an entrenched centralised party in power in the state has meant the use of such institutions as instruments of patronage. Violent battles have invariably taken place during panchayat elections, as these are seen as necessary by all political parties to capture or retain hold over the institutions.