The government wants to raise solar power generation capacity from the current 8 GW to 100 GW by 2022. How will such an aggressive solar programme impact India’s electricity distribution companies? How will it affect the cost, availability and quality of electricity for consumers? Does the pace of solar adoption being pushed by the government serve the public interest?

The protest of Tamils against the ban on Jallikattu is a trigger. The pent-up anger against the successive policies of the central government and corporate encroachment of resources is the main cause of massive turnout in the protests. The protests displayed the limits of the Hindu right’s attempts to make inroads into the state’s politics by valorising Tamil language and culture. The protests indicate a continuity of Tamil politics with renewed strength through social media activism.

A watered-down UBI based upon a dismantling of the existing social welfare schemes would be disastrous. (Editorial)

The campaign against Depo-Provera and the questions raised by the women’s groups still remain relevant. Reproductive rights, when reduced to “choice of contraceptives” without considering the overall health and well-being of women, result only in the control and “unfreedom” of women.

The public trust doctrine makes natural resources a part of the commons, owned equally by all, and legally owned by the state. The resources and opportunities that the present generation have inherited must be available to future generations in perpetuity. In the Goa mining case, the Supreme Court wanted to implement intergenerational equity on the grounds of the exhaustion of the iron-ore reserves as well as the widespread damage to the Goan environment and social fabric.

New Delhi’s “urban villages” are the result of government land acquisitions that began in 1912 and continued into the 1960s. Since the 1980s, growing demand for real estate within the city has engendered unprecedented residential and commercial development in these former agrarian areas. The consequences of this include structural changes in the built environment, shifts in the social make-up of the village, and new relationships with the municipal and planning authorities.

This article provides evidence on the impact of the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana on access to healthcare and financial risk protection; its coverage across selected states and whether the targeting is effective. Overall, just about 11% of households were enrolled and almost half of these households actually belonged to the non-poor category.

The Ethiopian approach to planning and development is a unique and bold departure from the cautious and incremental approach that has dominated the rhetoric and practice of development in the cities and regions of the third world since the rise and mainstreaming of participatory, small-scale and upgradation-based development.

Anupam Mishra’s work on how the indigenous water systems of Rajasthan have sustained a water regime not only made it possible for a robust civilisation to thrive in the desert but along with his writings on sustainable use of water, also inspired a college lecturer to find solutions to her domestic water problem.

The immediate impact of and reaction to demonetisation are documented and examined through a survey of around 200 families living in 28 slum or lower-income neighbourhoods in Mumbai in early December 2016. A drop in family income is recorded with wide variation across different groups and occupation types. There is also a drop in consumption as well as changes in the families’ savings in November. Finally, we find that the majority of respondents view the policy overall as positive, including the majority of those who experienced some loss of income in November.