Is the government trying to push a new land Acquisition Bill without addressing the concerns of the deprived people who stand to lose their livelihoods? Peoples’ movements and social action groups have charged that the cash-based Haryana and Mayawati models of land acquisition are equally ‘dangerous’ for the landless and the deprived people who get uprooted without compensation or rehabilitation. People’s movements have been demanding that instead of bringing Land...

Bhaggu, 65, says he can trace his memory back to when he was five. And he remembers the paradox that’s taunted him since: Of his village — Sohras, in northern Uttar Pradesh — being flooded every year and him having no water to drink. “They (government) distribute food, tarpaulin, kerosene, matchboxes but never made any arrangement for water,” says Bhaggu, a farm worker who goes by one name. “I think no...

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGA) has been in news mainly due to corruption or inefficiency. The country has spent close to Rs 40,000 crore this fiscal but a large number of urban middle class people and opinion leaders don’t know what to make of it. Cynicism apart, the rights-based scheme has proved to be a game-changer in rural India despite mixed success. The scheme has been relatively...

Interlinking of rivers has the potential to increase India's arable land by 35 million hectares (mha), Minister of State for Water Resources Vincent H. Pala said Tuesday. Harvesting flood waters to recharge of ground water would increase the availability by about 36 million cubic metres, he added. Speaking at the conference on water organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here, Pala said: 'India has to create an irrigation potential of more...

Contaminated water sources and the virtual absence of health care claim dozens of lives in the State, now in the grip of cholera. COME monsoon and the backward regions of Orissa are in the grip of water-borne diseases. This year too has been no different. According to official figures, 150 people had died of cholera and diarrhoea in the State as on September 15. Unofficial reports put the toll at more...