The Government has a proposed timeline for the award of compensation under the Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill. This timeline was not in the draft of the Bill posted on the Government's Web site on July 29 for comments from stakeholders and the public. After these responses and consultation with the stakeholders, seven changes have been made, the Rural Development Minister, Mr Jairam Ramesh, said. The Minister said that the...

The global 'farmland grab' in Ethiopia and the rest of Africa has become competitive, with companies from Asia, including India and China, joining it. AN extraordinary new process has been at work in the past few years: the aggressive entry of Indian corporations into the markets for agricultural land in Africa. At one level, this process is simply following the hoary old tradition in global capitalism of firms (often supported...

The UPA government's land acquisition bill was expected to fill gaps in the archaic 1894 act and streamline the process of land acquisition and ensure fair compensation to farmers and landowners. But even before the bill is introduced in Parliament murmurs of dissent are being heard. The Land Acquisition Amendment Bill, piloted by rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, has drawn fire from critics for legitimizing purchase of vast tracts of land,...

The government will recast the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, to give it a welfare edge, following criticism that it was disconnected from people's concern over corruption, high food prices and inflation. The attempt will be to make it more responsive to people's needs and increase earnings of the rural poor. The reform attempts to make the scheme truly demand-based, besides addressing issues of fraud, misuse of funds, corruption...

The Haryana assembly on Wednesday removed the limit on land ownership by a person or entity in case of non-agricultural land in urban and industrial zones. This comes after a recent Punjab and Haryana high court observation on "grave violations" of land ceiling laws by real estate companies, several of which own hundreds of acres of land. The assembly passed the Ceiling on Land Holdings (Amendment) Bill, 2011, which is...