-Live Mint The current policy on compensating landowners could adversely affect character of India’s future growth The Parliament is currently considering a land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement Bill (LARR Bill), as are various state legislatures. These are likely to affect the pace and character of future growth in India in a significant way.  Setting up new industries, service establishments and real estate development will inevitably require land to be acquired from rural areas....

-The Hindu Business Line India can learn from Brazil’s Bolsa Familia and China’s Gansu Programme to make refinements to its MGNREGA scheme. The development experiences of Brazil, China and India provide a valuable opportunity to understand the relationship between growth and distribution over periods of high rates of growth. The growth story playing out in all the three emerging economies have resulted in large regional as well as spatial inequalities, between rural and...

-Greenpeace Genetically engineered (GE) food is a hot button topic in India. What happens here often sends ripples throughout the GE debate worldwide, but what happened last week is surely a major milestone. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, made up of members of parliament (MPs) from across party lines, tabled its latest report (http://164.100.47.134/lsscommittee/Agriculture/GM_Report.pdf) on GE food and GE crops following intense consultation with farmers, environmental groups, scientists and consumer groups. The...

-PTI Environment Ministry has constituted a high-level Working Group headed by eminent space scientist and Planning Commission member K Kasturirangan to examine the Western Ghats ecology expert panel report "in a holistic and multidisciplinary fashion". The nine-member Group will examine the Madhav Gadgil committee report released recently "in a holistic and multidisciplinary fashion keeping in view the comments received from the concerned state governments, central ministries, stakeholders", the Ministry said. The panel will...

-Pratirodh Bureau Activists led by Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar have alleged that the much awaited Land Acquisition Bill was actually a "diluted version" of the Standing Committee's recommended bill.   The activists under belonging to various groups, including National Alliance of People’s Movements, National Forum of Forest people and Forest Workers, Kisan Sangharsh Samiti and Sangharsh claimed that the "positive" position taken by the Standing Committee had been diluted by the...