-Rediff.com   India, home to a quarter of the world's hungry people with nearly 40 per cent of the population malnourished, is facing an unprecedented food crisis, international charity organisation Oxfam said on Wednesday. "Despite the doubling of the size of its economy since 1990, the number of hungry people in India has increased by 65 million because economic development excluded the rural poor and social protection schemes failed to reach them," Oxfam...

Facing widespread criticism over blatant acquisition of agriculture land across the state at throwaway prices and handing it over to private builders at high rate, UP chief minister Mayawati on Thursday announced a new land policy after holding meeting with farmer representatives. As per the new policy, the land acquisition will be done only after signing an agreement with the affected farmers. The government will act as a facilitator in land...

The farmers' struggle against land acquisition only shows that from passive forms of protest they have turned to active forms of resistance. THE recent agitation by farmers in Uttar Pradesh against cropland acquisition for non-agricultural purposes is only the latest in a long series of protests by farmers and rural communities, which started a decade ago in different parts of the country and which gathered momentum over the past five...

The farmers' agitation in Uttar Pradesh brings into focus the indiscriminate acquisition of land by the state for corporate-led development. ON May 19, three days before the formal observation of the second anniversary of the United Progressive Alliance government, Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi made a categorical announcement that in the monsoon session of Parliament scheduled to begin in July the ruling coalition would bring in legislation that...

Governments can acquire land for “public purpose” while making sure that the displaced are compensated, relocated and rehabilitated. THE violent conflict over land acquisition in Uttar Pradesh and the persisting resistance to land acquisition for the Posco project in Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa are merely recent instances that exemplify the growing stand-off between the Indian state and its people centred on land. On the one side are governments (both Central...