Kolkata : Mamata Banerjee’s announcement banning the acquisition of land by any government department or agency for industry has grounded over a dozen key industrial parks across the state. These projects, in various stages of progress — and in which land acquisition was on — account for a committed investment of Rs 50,000 crore. The announcement — underlined by the state Industries and Finance Ministers — has stunned industry and so...

In his fields, Badhia Naval Singh , a farmer tilling 8 bighas of land in the Bagli tehsil in Madhya Pradesh, has been seeing something strange for a while now. Earlier, if he pulled out a tuft of grass, he would see earthworms . "Ab woh dikhna bandh ho gaye hain (they don't show up any longer)," says the 45-yearold . Also, he says, when he ploughed earlier, the soil...

-BBC   At least 69 people have been killed and almost 250 injured in a train derailment in northern India. A dozen coaches of the Kalka Mail passenger train left the rails near the town of Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh. Rescue workers and locals have been working through the night to try to free trapped passengers from the badly damaged carriages. The train was travelling from Howrah near Calcutta to the capital Delhi and...

India registered a good 8.5 percent GDP growth in 2010-11 staving off the global impact of recession mainly due to the major recovery in the agriculture sector. The recorded foodgrain production in 2010-11 was the outcome of the initiatives of the state governments, the union government has now acknowledged. It was an innovation's galore to say the least if one takes into consideration the efforts of the 10 states that went...

-PTI   A two-day meeting between the Planning Commission and the Northeastern states for preparing of the 'Approach' paper to the 12th Plan (2012-17) began today in Guwahati. The Planning Commission team for the meeting will be headed by the Deputy Chairman of the Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The meeting is fifth and concluding regional consultation with Northeastern states to take their views in order to prepare the Approach paper that seeks to...