-Live Mint   After the late Charan Singh, he was the moving force behind the formidable farm lobby in north India. Seen from that vantage, one could say he became a leader in his own right only after Singh left the stage Mahendra Singh Tikait’s political career took off long after productivity growth in Green Revolution had begun to taper off. The career of this rich farmers’ leader—who died on Sunday—was emblematic...

Manasi Manna of Singur hopes that Mamata Banerjee will return her one-acre plot, which had been acquired for the Nano project, after taking charge as chief minister. “My husband and I used to cultivate the land. We used to get three crops a year. We never had to worry about food. Everything came from that land. But after it was forcibly taken away for the small-car project, I have been forced...

It was the mother of all Nandigrams. If there was one Nandigram on March 14, 2007, then perhaps there were dozens of Nandigrams during the three-day cleanse-Marichjhapi operation in January 1979.    “It was Saraswati Puja. The police were just raining bullets as soon as the refugees landed in our village! Like everybody else on the road, I, too, fled for safety as I could see people falling either injured or...

The story of Khairlanji as a story of the plight of the Scheduled Castes in scores of villages has joined the pantheon of protest literature of the Dalit movement with the staging of Marathi play Tanta Mukta Gaon (Dispute-Free Village). The Maharashtra government in 2010 declared the village of Khairlanji, infamous for the brutal killings of four members of the Bhotmange family, a “Tanta Mukta Gaon” under a government programme which...

The UPA-II government introduces with BJP support two anti-labour Bills, the Pension Bill and the Labour Laws Amendment Bill. ON March 24, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government managed to do what it had not been able to do in its first term – it reintroduced the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Bill in Parliament with the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The objective of the Bill is...