In that the trend of falling state investment in sector after sector continues, this budget does not break with neo-liberalism. Instead, it just dolls it up. India is still on a path damaging and dangerous to the poor. The UPA has learned nothing and forgotten everything, writes P Sainath.

Knowing that big money is undermining the game as a whole, and pussyfooting around it, just isn't cricket, writes P Sainath.

After a lull of some years, farmers are being jailed for debt in Andhra Pradesh. Even those in drought-hit districts who cannot repay their loans. Farm unions see the banks as driving a dangerous and explosive process which lets off crorepati defaulters but jails bankrupt farmers owing a few thousand rupees, writes P Sainath.

The agrarian crisis has seen over a lakh of women farmers lose their husbands. But survivors like Kalavati Bandurkar - with seven daughters - still run their farms, writes P Sainath.

Several women in Karnataka's Mandya district like Jayalakshmamma, whose husband committed suicide four years ago, still stand up to the unending pressure with incredible resilience, writes P Sainath.

P Sainath

Gross inequality does far more than breed resentment. It destroys millions of lives, devastates the access of the poor to basic needs, dehumanises both its victims and its votaries, and undermines democracy itself, writes P Sainath.

Families left behind by farmers who committed suicide face up to the odds, fighting for survival so that the next generation might do better. As one farm widow puts it, "it is all for the children, sir. Our time has gone". P Sainath reports.

Countless ordinary Indians sacrificed much for Independence without a thought of reward. Much of that generation has died out. Most others are very old, and several are ailing or otherwise in distress. Many in rural India, like Laxmi Panda, have lost much and gained little, writes P Sainath.

Countless rural Indians sacrificed much for India's freedom, to fade into oblivion later, seeking neither reward nor recognition. Gandhian Baji Mohammed, who has been active for 70 years in one or the other cause, is amongst the last of this dying tribe, writes P Sainath.

The state has witnessed 30,000 farm suicides in a decade. Vidarbha is the worst place in the nation to be a farmer, writes P Sainath.

While the number of farm suicides kept increasing, the number of farmers has fallen since 2001, with countless thousands abandoning agriculture in distress, writes P Sainath.

Close to 150,000 Indian farmers committed suicide in nine years from 1997 to 2005, official data show. While farm suicides have occurred in many States, nearly two thirds of these deaths are concentrated in five States, writes P Sainath.

Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh have together seen 89,362 farmers' suicides between 1997 and 2005. On average, one farmer took his or her life every 53 minutes between 1997 and 2005 in just these states, writes P Sainath.

Increasingly, job quotas are cited as 'discrimination' - in reverse. But the word discrimination in terms of caste means something very different that the media mostly do not, or choose not to, understand, writes P Sainath.

As more and more people pour out of the villages, voting with their feet against the distress in the countryside, the base the Sena built within Mumbai's own dispossessed and migrants of Marathi background is now under contest. It's a larger canvas that won't go away, arrest or no arrest, writes P Sainath.

An overwhelming majority of Vidharbha's farmers do not gain from the farm loan waiver because they are too 'big.' But the IPL waiver goes to some of India's richest millionaires and billionaires. They aren't too big, writes P Sainath.

In Jadcherla, 13 candidates fought the same Assembly seat but contested for, not against one another. P Sainath reports.

The employment guarantee in rural areas is having multiple and layered effects. With better wages, the bargaining power of the weakest has gone up a notch. P Sainath reports.

The broad trends of the past decade seem unshaken. Farmer suicides in the country since 1997 now total 182,936, but the real causes behind this devastation remain unaddressed, reports P Sainath.

If you are worth Rs.50 million or more, you are 75 times more likely to win an election to the Lok Sabha than if you are worth under Rs.1 million. P Sainath does a different kind of electoral math.

Ask for expansion of the NREGS, universal access to the PDS, more spending on health and education - and there's no money. But there?s enough to give away to the corporate world in concessions, writes P Sainath.

Growing numbers of elected representatives fund their poll campaigns with corporate backing. And growing numbers of people with a big business background have ventured directly into the electoral arena, writes P Sainath.

The share of the 'suicide belt' - Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh - remains very high; these states account for two-thirds of the total farm suicides in the country. P Sainath reports.

In 2006-08, Maharashtra saw 12, 493 farm suicides. That is 85 per cent higher than the 6,745 suicides it recorded during 1997-1999. And the worst three-year period for any State, any time. P Sainath reports.

Maybe the pro-farmer claim was a typing error. This is a budget crafted for, and perhaps by, the corporate farmer and agribusiness, writes P Sainath.

Freebies for the IPL - at a time of savage food subsidy cuts for the poor - benefit four men who make the Forbes Billionaire List of 2010 and a few other, mere multi-millionaires, notes P Sainath.

Two years of drought has started to take its toll on the people of Vidarbha, with a failed crop leaving them with no income to tide over the crisis, writes P Sainath.

The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed. The truth is the government seeks ways to spend less and less on the very food security it talks about, writes P Sainath.

The NREGS is restricted to a 100 days a year. The PDS is targeted to exclude 'APL' families. Only exploitation is universal, writes P Sainath.

There is indeed a vital link between paid news and private treaties. One is in the political sphere. And, second, in the sphere of business and commerce, writes P Sainath.

The Commonwealth Games were no showcase, but a mirror of India 2010. If they presented anything, it was Indian crony, casino capitalism at its most vigorous, writes P Sainath.

Five States did manage a significant decline in the average number of farm suicides between 2003 and 2010. However, more States have reported increases over the same period, reports P Sainath.

Without the right kind of thinking, relief for victims of disasters may actually hurt more than help says Dilip D'Souza.

A better tomorrow must be for us all, not just for the middle and upper classes. This has little to do with morality, altruism or idealism, but much more to do with realism says Dilip D'Souza.

The Kumbakonam and Ervadi tragedies may not have happened if our nation building process had taken a different turn decades ago. Dilip D'Souza on a patriotism that stems from concern for everyone.

In Samiyarpettai, sub-collector Rajendra Ratnoo had put together a disaster management plan as a test case just two months ago. When the tsunami came last December 26, Ratnoo's plan worked spectacularly. Over one hundred survived because of Ratnoo's plan. That was an achievement, says Dilip D'Souza.

What's the difference between hearing a case, and merely setting a date for hearing it? Dilip D'Souza isn't quite sure, after yet another day spent answering a court summons. Justice, he learns first-hand, is riding on a prayer, and is often at least one more hearing away.

The tsunami is not forgotten, but in Keechankuppam the fishermen have weighed the risk of another tsunami against the prospects for finding safer housing further inland. And so their huts are back again on the once-ravaged beach, as though the tsunami never happened, writes Dilip D'Souza.

As a believer in the promise of democracy first and above all, I long for the checks and balances of competing ideologies. Yet for too long in this country, we heard only, or largely, the voice of the left, and the right that did emerge eventually was itself flawed, writes Dilip D'Souza.

The oppression of the Dalit community, and especially its women, by upper caste society is still widely prevalent in Rasulpura village of Rajasthan’s Ajmer district. Shirish Khare visits the village to find that the agents of law are often equally discriminatory.

The efforts of metals major Hindalco to mine bauxite from Mali Parbat in Odisha has run up against stiff resistance from local Kondh adivasis, who wouldn’t shy away from militancy to protect their ecology, if needed. Javed Iqbal explores why they reject ‘industrial development’.

It’s like a scam unnoticed: even after access to over 45000 hectares of land, with massive tax exemptions and holidays, the SEZ experience has been a sorry story. Devinder Sharma questions the government’s economic reasoning and insists on accountability.

Reviewing recent High Court and Supreme Court rulings, Videh Upadhyay comments on judicial recipes for protecting urban water bodies

Policies on development have been ignored with impunity. Little wonder, then, that the language of people's demands now centers on "rights", says Videh Upadhyay.

Suman Sahai discusses India's progressive legislation in the area of patents and protection for plant varieties.

A critique of the process and research used by the Justice Malimath Committee to recommend reforms to the Criminal Justice System. This is the first of a two part series.
Click here to read Part II

In the second and concluding part of the series on the Malimath Committee's report, Bikram Jeet Batra looks at the detailed recommendations in terms of implications for Human Rights.
Earlier: Part I

Allegations have been made repeatedly that the penal code's protection against matrimonial cruelty is often abused by women. But no evidence is given to support this claim, says Bikram Jeet Batra.

A new information service sets out to update citizens and specialists about the latest developments at the Supreme Court on forest related cases, reports Rasika Dhavse.