Seven elephants were killed after being hit by a speeding goods train in India as they attempted to rescue two young ones on the track. Officials in West Bengal said five died instantly and two others later succumbed to their injuries. Another elephant was wounded but survived. The baby elephants became trapped on the track at Moraghat Tea Garden, near Binnaguri in Jalpaiguri district. The others wandered onto the line in an attempt...

Two days after the government scrapped a bauxite mining project in Orissa, Rahul Gandhi visited Niyamgiri, the ground zero of the anti-mine protests and told tribals that he was their sipahi in Delhi. Around the same time, farmers in Uttar Pradesh said they wouldn’t sell their land at the rates the government was offering. India is growing fast, but hassles over the acquisition of land are going to be the...

40 farmers of Simaldih village, located around three kilometres from Dhanbad railway station are facing drought for 10 years as 25 acres of their fertile land has turned barren. The villagers alleged that a large drain connected to the Central Hospital of Bharat coking coal Limited (BCCL) has turned their land infertile. The villagers said that the chemical waste from the drain directly fall on their land. A few years ago...

With a gas-guzzler of an economy, India had been spending tens of billions of dollars annually to import petroleum. And so its 2009 policy on biofuels mandated that by 2017, India would have enough biofuel production to cover at least 20 percent of the country’s oil consumption. The government has in fact been encouraging the cultivation of jatropha curcas for the past seven years, believing that would be the fastest way...

Mayawati's quick reflexes after the setback over land acquisition in Aligarh has put Congress in a spot, with the Centre fearing it may be dubbed the villain for farmers' woes if it does not prevail upon Trinamool Congress to relent on the bills for Land Acquisition amendment and R&R. After Uttar Pradesh brought its liberal Resettlement and Rehabilitation policy to win over farmers riled by "low land rates" for Yamuna...