-The Hindu Launched towards the end of 2010, the Rs. 9,000-crore Gujarat Solar Park, set up on government wasteland in north Gujarat, has already been producing 214 MW from the sun, making it the first State to generate such capacity at a single location. And when expanded to 5,000 acres from the present 2,669 acres, the Charanka Park, located at a village of Patan district, will generate 500 MW. This will make...

-Down to Earth For RTI activists of Bihar the cost of exposing corruption is life Twenty-year-old Rahul Kumar, a right to information (RTI) activist, knew the land mafia was behind his parents' murder. His mother and father were involved in a land dispute in Muzaffarpur's Sirisia Jagdish village. Barely a week after filing an RTI application to seek information about the murderers, Kumar was kidnapped. A day later, on March 10, 2012,...

-Down to Earth Enforcement and strengthening of laws that protect land rights of tribals and forest dwellers recommended Disputes over land rights, which have turned violent in recent years with communities taking on authorities, are set to rise India. Land requirement for industrial projects in India are set to be triple in the next 15 years, and with this conflicts over land acquisition are going to increase, according to a new study. Currently,...

-Frontline Farmers protest against the Central clearance for coal bed methane exploration in Mannargudi, Tamil Nadu, as they fear it will devastate agriculture in Tiruvarur and Thanjavur districts.  THE woes of the delta farmers of Tamil Nadu are far from over. While the Cauvery tangle continues unresolved, they fear the proposed multi-crore project for commercial exploration and exploitation of coal bed methane (CBM) in the Mannargudi block of Tiruvarur district will prove...

-PTI PATNA: Suffering huge power shortage, the Bihar government has devised a policy to encourage the use of solar energy in the state that would provide tax incentives for installing such plants on wastelands. The state government has done a survey which revealed that there is a tremendous scope for development of solar energy, energy minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav said. Accordingly, the state government has devised a solar energy promotion policy to popularise...