-The Telegraph   Tata Motors has said the Singur land-return bill does not state the reasons for the transfer of the Nano plant, breaking its silence to portray a vivid description of the agitation that preceded its pullout without mentioning either Mamata Banerjee or her party. The Tatas added that “appropriate steps” would be taken after studying the bill that mentions Tata Motors “abandoned” the project. The bill was passed in the...

Based on detailed analysis of weather data of last five years in Leh, Ladakh, scientists have attributed the recent cloudburst in the region to prolonged winters which may be due to climate change. "After going through the sequence of events of the weather that led to the cloudburst on August 6, it has been reinforced that the catastrophe was due to prolonged winters being witnessed in the region," sources in Leh-based...

The 2010 Seeds Bill that has been introduced in Parliament does address some of the major concerns in the aborted 2004 version, but strangely a number of important correctives – on regulation, consistency and punishment – that had been incorporated in the 2008 version (which lapsed in 2009) have now been modified or dropped altogether. What forces are pushing the government to act against the interests of India’s farmers? The third...

"India lives in several centuries at the same time. Somehow we manage to progress and regress simultaneously." Arundhati Roy Controversies, protests and violence have marred land acquisition for projects in India. Protests against acquiring agricultural land, inappropriate compensation or environmental impact have been the main reasons for these protests. In most cases, the protests are by farmers who are hardly compensated after their fertile agricultural land is taken over in for...

Many projects for supplying water in Vidarbha remain on paper, though the money allotted is very real. Sarada Badre and her daughters have stopped their bi-weekly 20-km walking trips. That was their routine for a while. “The orange trees have withered and there's no water anyway,” says Saradabai at her home in Sirasgaon village in Amravati district. In theory, watering their 214 orange trees shouldn't be too hard. Though the nearby...