-People's Democracy IT seems the Sheila Dixit government of Delhi, backed by powerful elements in the UPA-2 central government, will let nothing stand in the way of water privatisation in the capital. Several earlier attempts going back many years to fully or partially privatise distribution of water, especially the big loan application to the World Bank in 2005, were foiled by vigilant community organisations, public interest groups, trade unions and political...

-The Telegraph Buniadpur, Aug. 31: Mamata Banerjee, who has chosen to keep the state’s hands off land acquisition, today appealed to villagers in South Dinajpur for plots to set up anganwadi centres and hinted that the government was finding it difficult to get land. The chief minister, while speaking about acquiring land for an AIIMS-like hospital, has told a rally in Itahar yesterday that she would not “put a gun to a...

-The Hindu Activists brand them illegal Bangladeshi migrants Ninety-eight migrant labourers were dragged out of a train and assaulted, allegedly by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi PARIshad (ABVP) members, at Mandya in Karnataka late on Wednesday night. The activists terrorised the labourers hailing from West Bengal, Orissa, Rajasthan, Bihar and other States for nearly two hours before dragging them out, claiming they were “illegal Bangladeshis.” The labourers were heading to Mangalore on the Yeshwantpur-Kannur Express. Scores of...

-The Indian Express Firebrand leader who rose swiftly till downfall She rose swiftly through the ranks, having made her mark as a firebrand leader who had saffron politics as part of her legacy. Mayaben Surendrabhai Kodnani, convicted of murder, conspiracy and spreading communal hatred, is the daughter of a staunch RSS worker who had suffered the pains of Partition, moving from Tharparkar in Sind province to Deesa in Gujarat. Kodnani, the first sitting...

-The Hindu In her article in The Hindu, (“Nailing the lie of the land,” Op-Ed, August 23, 2012), Ms Medha Patkar has forcefully and with reason argued against the devastating consequences of land acquisition. Without getting into the concerns raised with regard to the larger “development model” we would like to respond to the issues she has raised with the proposed Bill on Land Acquisition which seem predicated on an understanding...