-Frontline Riding roughshod over farmers' concerns, the Gujarat government notifies a project to develop the Mandal-Becharaji Special Investment Region, an industrial hub spread over 50,884 hectares, affecting 44 villages. But the villagers see it as a real estate scam and are determined to resist it. GUJARAT may soon have several new townships. The Narendra Modi-led government has proposed to set up 13 special investment regions (SIRs), which are essentially industrial hubs...

-PTI GWALIOR: Rural Development Ministry would join hands with a leading defence research organisation to push eco-friendly bio-toilets in villages in four states where the menace of open defecation remained unaddressed. Impressed by the achievement of the Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE) in developing low cost bio-toilets, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today said that members of Women Self Help Groups from Bihar, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh would be...

-Down to Earth Our policy makers should move away from the income criterion for estimating poverty and take cognisance of other indicators Amid mounting criticism and heated debates about the poverty line, a challenge has resurfaced to examine whether there could be a single non-monetary criterion of estimating poverty. A poverty line is a monetary cut-off point below which a person is deemed to be poor. Thus, any attempt to measure poverty...

-Economic and Political Weekly The government has notified a Draft Land Reforms Policy which, on paper, has all the requisites of an earnest programme. Yet, the near total failure of earlier efforts at land reforms in India leave little room for hope that something substantial will at last be done to combat landlessness. Harsh Mander (manderharsh@gmail.com) is with the Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi, and works with survivors of mass violence,...

-The Hindu Health activists demand public disclosure of maternal death reviews and the remedial action taken Twenty-two-year-old Kousalya (name changed), a Scheduled Caste woman in a remote village in Karnataka, was in an abusive marriage. She had suffered a late miscarriage in her first pregnancy and had been very careful with seeking antenatal care early in this pregnancy. She had moderate anaemia which was not identified or treated at the taluka hospital....