The growth of militant left radicalism, known as the Naxalite movement in official documents and civil society discussions, has acquired considerable prominence in the public policy discourse, media coverage and interaction with social scientists. The subject has also been deliberated upon in seminars across the country. The Government policy to deal with it has also polarised thinking on how it should be understood and characterised and what would be the most appropriate approach to neutralise its influence.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005 which is a rights-based flagship scheme of the Government of India with effect from 2 February, 2006, guarantees at least 100 days of wage employment in a given financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. The MGNREGA is also intended to create durable community assets which would enhance productivity along with an increase in demand for labour. The Act mandates 33 per cent participation of women.

The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) is a protracted struggle of more than three decades against large dams. While the movement has been a witness to various highs and lows, some key lessons nevertheless can be deducted by analysing its overall successes and failures. Arguments presented in this article are based on the assumption that ‘domestic mobilisation is one of the main strategies in shaping political will amongst state actors’.

The tribal and ecological history of India has been the history of forced transformation of the natural commons into private property engineered under both the colonial and post colonial state policy. In the following period of structural adjustment programme during and after the 1990s the state has opened the public domain for privatisation by the trans–national corporations and Indian small and large companies. Natural commons is being treated as capital.

Health sector reforms associated with decentralization, contraction of public sector, service contracting, user fees, etc., influence health sector both from the demand side and the supply side. In the wake of decreasing public expenditure on health, it is necessary to find the other factors that could take care of the health status. This article is an attempt to find the impact of economic reforms on infant mortality rate and life expectancy at birth. The study is based upon secondary data. Statistical tools like mean, ranking, and regression models are used.

Beacuse of the pressure of development, displacement of people from project sites has become an ubiquitous phenomenon. Relatively high rate of growth of the Indian economy has added new dimensions and diversity to project-related displacement. Development projects call for acquisition of land which, undertaken on a large scale and without consultation with the owners of land, have led to agitation and public protests. A proper resettlement policy is a key to dealing with this problem.

In a state such as Odisha in which Dalit and tribal groups comprise about 40 per cent of the total population, the issue of ‘access’ to land and resources has apparently been central to all conflicts. For traditional communities, ‘access’ is directly linked to civilizational paradigms and cultural ethos, which rather decide their ‘economics’, and not the other way round that may be true for modern, techno-centric civilizations. Most mainstream discourses of history have, however, tried to locate the crisis in the ‘absence of state interventions’.

The Government of India set up the ‘Health Survey and Development Committee’, popularly known as the ‘Bhore Committee’ in 1943 to draw up the scheme of health services for the newly emerging independent India. The recommendations made by the committee remain a landmark in the development of health services in the country and continue to inspire the health workers in the country in their struggle for developing pro-people health system.

The neo-liberal transformation of global economy has brought in a new trade regime replacing GATT 1947 with incorporation of services and intellectual property in the products to be exchanged and WTO as its powerful regulator. Health being one of the services has become tradable for the first time. India has chosen to engage in health trade substantially to drive economic benefits from medical tourism, export of pharmaceuticals and manpower, and to carry out contract clinical trials.

This article suggests how the Gandhi–Ambedkar–Narayanaguru–Marx visions can be synthesised in support of the movement for the liberation and empowerment of India’s dalits. It brings out the beginnings and evolution of Gandhji’s sensitivity and opposition to ‘untouchability’.