Feature Article

Special economic zones and sit-ins. Mega-projects and marches. Public-private partnerships and pitched battles. Precociously, because they are desperate, state governments are willing to hand land, forest, water over to industry.

Raucously, because they are really desperate, people all over India have begun to use all available means to contest the usually coercive intrusion of the State into their lives, and livelihoods.

Consider, as symptom, the Orissa government

State of strife Enlarge view Is India building its developmental house from the roof down, with a non-existent foundation? Arun Kumar, professor of economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, thinks so.

21 February, 2006: Anti-POSCO groups demonstrate against the visit of the then Panchayati Raj Minister, Dr Damodar Rout 8 December, 2006: Anti-POSCO convention held at Balitutha February, 2007: Polling for panchayat elections could not be held on some booths in Dhinkia following protests 13 October, 2007: Four POSCO-India executives taken hostage and beaten up 29 November, 2007:

There is no standing national database on panchayat finances in India, which limits any meaningful analysis of the revenue effort of panchayats. Based on a field survey in the four states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Orissa, this paper studies the own revenue effort of rural local bodies within their statutorily defined revenue rights. The study finds that the assigned tax rights are not fully utilised by the panchayats and non-tax revenue is the dominant source of their own revenue.

While the headcount index of poverty in India has fallen, per capita cereal consumption and calorie intake have also decreased. At the poverty line, the minimum calorie requirements used for defining this line in the base year are not being met in later years. While the official poverty line used the food requirement norm from nutrition science, this paper employs the food consumption requirement derived from the Engel curve as the norm to arrive at a measure of food consumption deprivation.

Despite a number of breaches in the Narmada main canal over the years, command area ecological concerns are simply not being paid enough attention by the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam.

The origins of the conflagration in June in Kashmir on forest land allocation for construction of facilities for the Amarnath yatra lie in open state promotion of the pilgrimage. The yatra has caused considerable damage to the economy and ecology of the area. The high-handed actions of the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board only aggravated the situation.

Tapas Soren, a tribal of Birakhap in Jharkhand, committed self-immolation recently, impoverished by the constant demand for bribes by local officials for work done under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. His death soon after the murder of Lalit Mehta who had exposed corruption in NREGA schemes in Palamu is a damning comment on how the scheme is being implemented in Jharkhand.

By almost every measure, China's growth is extraordinary. But behind the astonishing statistics is a more complex reality. (Editorial)