The West Bengal govt's role as a non-market intermediary in an essentially private land transaction is questionable The West Bengal government has passed a new legislation that transfers the land back to those who refused to accept the compensation that they were offered during the acquisition of their lands for the Tata Nano factory. The Tata group has promptly gone to court claiming that this is an unconstitutional Act. Surely one...

The Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY), under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, has been launched for slum dwellers and the urban poor on the lines of the Indira Awas Yojana for the rural poor. RAY is a right-based, reform-driven programme under the Jawaharlal National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). It has been launched with the aim of creating a slum-free India by providing affordable housing for slum dwellers. A Guwahati...

-The Telegraph   The Singur land was taken over by the state government tonight after a flurry of dramatic events, prompting the Tatas to make preparations to move the high court tomorrow morning. Sources said Tata Motors wrote to top state government officials tonight, requesting them not to alter the status quo without a court order. However, a government official said in Singur that the administration had taken possession of the land...

Land acquisition and involuntary displacement have been the fountainhead of enormous destitution of millions of invisible people since Independence. Generations of those sacrificed for ‘development’ are farmers and farm workers, and many are fragile tribal people and forest gatherers. By coercive displacement and dispossession, governments pauperise its poorest people, and its food-growers, so that the ‘nation’ can prosper and grow. Rage at persisting State injustice of coercive displacement frequently spills onto...

The Singur land take-back bill has spurred a group of farmers in Burdwan to demand return of their plots that were acquired for a proposed health city. The 84 farmers had turned down cheques in exchange for 23 acres — all multi-crop land — that had been acquired in 2005 for the project in Goda. Fifty-seven acres from 350 landowners were marked for acquisition at the rate of Rs 12 lakh an...