Why we are doing this story     * Tribal lands are under pressure across India. In Orissa, they have been holding out against big corporates like Vedanta and Posco. *** From afar, the fumes rising from factory chimneys in Gujarat’s industrial belt make them seem like skyscrapers on fire. It’s a grey rust-and-chemicals stretch that they call, without irony, the Golden Corridor. It extends all the way from the north of Ahmedabad, through...

Monija Khatun has not got her salary as ad-hoc teacher for 17 months, youth in Soliya village in Jharkhand have got no work under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) for the last five months and half of the newly constructed wells have collapsed in another village. These are just a few stories from a Naxal affected district of Jharkhand, where people feel alienated from the development process, even...

The rural development ministry has put out a draft of the proposed National Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) bill for public comment. There is no doubt it is a big improvement on the 1894 colonial law that was long overdue for repeal; in particular, it is intended to be far more farmer-friendly. Yet, in several respects the Bill is patently inadequate, both in its objectives and the mechanics...

-PTI   The Gujarat government has made a request to the Centre not to ban Endosulfan, an agriculture pesticide found to be an organic pollutant, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said in the Rajya Sabha on Friday. Answering questions, he said production, sale and use of Endosulfan has been banned by Supreme Court, through an interim order, on May 13 in the country. “What the Supreme Court said, we will oblige,” he said. In reply to...

Orders Environment Impact Assessment study in the area The Supreme Court, which earlier suspended mining operations in the Bellary area, on Friday partially lifted the ban and allowed the public sector National Mineral Development Corporation to undertake mining in two leases to cater for the domestic market. The Forest Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices Aftab Alam and Swatanter Kumar, however, rejected the plea by a private miners' association that...