Feature Article

The soil as a natural resource has always been taken for granted by policymakers. While the government investments continue to support chemical fertiliser-based farming models, this article explores the contradictions in soil health management policies and their impact on farming and food production. It argues that it is high time that the government chalks out a plan to move away from dependence on chemical fertilisers to ensure food security in the country and makes investments to support an holistic ecological fertilisation programme.

A reply to T R Dilip's assertion (EPW, 5 May 2012) that Sakthivel Selvaraj and Anup K Karan (EPW, 17 March 2012) arrived at unacceptable conclusions due to methodological fl aws with regard to assessing the effectiveness of publicly-fi nanced health insurance schemes.

An ethnography of everyday life in Shivaji Nagar, a predominantly Muslim slum locality in Mumbai, illustrates how its "Muslimness" complicates the residents' access to water, a commodified and politicised amenity. The struggles of local Muslims to access water also involve holding the state accountable through localised "mundane" politics at the periphery. The state's inability to address the differential access to water is challenged through locally elected political representatives.

The large dams being built on the rivers of the eastern Himalayas have become highly controversial. The hydropower that north-east India is expected to produce is meant almost entirely for use elsewhere. That these dams will be exclusively hydropower and not multipurpose dams and that there will be a great unevenness in the distribution of potential gains and losses - and of vulnerability to risks - accounts for a serious legitimacy deficit in India's ambitious hydropower development plans in the region.

The peripheries of urban areas are refusing to become the dumping grounds of municipal waste. (Editorial)

This article is based on a visit to Mundra taluka of Kutch district, Gujarat in January 2011 to understand first hand the plunder of common property resources. It focuses on the Mundra Port and special economic zone developed by the Adani Group and a thermal power plant of OPG Power and their impact on different sections of the local community.