Now that the Government has finally struck down the Vedanta mining project in Orissa, senior Maoist leader Kobad Ghandy, presently under arrest inside Delhi’s Tihar jail, writes about how mining giants are making obscene amounts of money at the cost of the poor while even the State fails to make any gains.

The Government, says the author, needs to replace its self-righteous ‘development’ rhetoric with concrete action on the environment. For a start, it could reconsider the planned mining projects that will damage the environment on a gigantic scale.

CELESTIAL HEROISM IS a bestseller, unless it is badly made. In it merges great survivor dramas and the romance of breaching the boundaries of human…