-The Telegraph The Supreme Court today asked the Centre and environmentalists whether they want tribals to live in “abject poverty for the next 100 years” by insisting a Vedanta bauxite mining project shouldn’t come up in Odisha’s Niyamgiri Hills. “If the tribals are offered modern benefits, will they not accept? Do you want them to remain like that for 100 years, collecting firewood and tendu leaves,” Justices Aftab Alam, K.S. Radhakrishnan and...

-The Guardian Communities have more hope than ever of seeing off companies trying to acquire their land, with support from media and NGOs A new report on land acquisition by the Munden Project/Rights and Resources Initiative brings an important angle to the land "grab" debate. Rather than focusing on the ethics of land grabbing, the report makes the business case for working with local communities, arguing that failure to inform or fairly...

-The Hindu In carrying out Afzal Guru’s death sentence, the government deliberately ignored the view of the Supreme Court and courts across the world that hanging a person after holding him in custody for years is inhuman The execution of Afzal Guru on February 9, 2013 was an inhumane act by the Government of India. Afzal Guru was hanged seven years after the Supreme Court’s pronouncement of the death sentence on him...

-Economic and Political Weekly The proposed legislation on the National Food Security Act has been steadily watered down since it was fi rst mooted in 2009. The Parliamentary Standing Committee that examined the 2011 Bill has disappointingly continued with "targeting". If the government passes the bill incorporating the committee's suggestions, a historic opportunity to combat hunger and malnutrition would be lost. Ankita Aggarwal (aggarwal.ankita87@gmail.com) is a Research Scholar at the Centre for...

-The Hindu Gandhi’s country must set an example by abolishing capital punishment, says Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer The President has dismissed the mercy petitions of four of Veerappan’s associates who had been sentenced to death. They should not hang. I appeal to the authorities to remove the death sentence from the statute book. Every state execution amounts to nothing but murder. The people of India must rise against such grave crimes by the...