Why we are doing this story     * Tribal lands are under pressure across India. In Orissa, they have been holding out against big corporates like Vedanta and POSCO. *** From afar, the fumes rising from factory chimneys in Gujarat’s industrial belt make them seem like skyscrapers on fire. It’s a grey rust-and-chemicals stretch that they call, without irony, the Golden Corridor. It extends all the way from the north of Ahmedabad, through...

Through every stage of environmental clearance, the Prime Minister's Office and the finance ministry tracked the Rs 54,000-crorePOSCO integrated steel plant with keen interest even as the environment ministry sidestepped its own reservations to let the project pass, records with TOI show. The records accessed from the environment ministry do not show any interference from the two quarters but the PMO and the finance ministry followed the case from 2007...

Farmers in Gadag district who succeeded in making the government revisit its decision to acquire land for housing South Korea’s POSCO Steel Company, are now facing the prospect of their land being acquired for setting up agro-based industries. The government has decided to keep land ready in view of the Global Agri-Business Investment and Food Processing Meet 2011. This time, instead of Halligudi, over 3,800 acres in Petalur, Jantli-Shirur and Mevundi...

-The Business Standard   Even as POSCO India is yet to submit a written response on the draft prepared for renewal of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Orissa government, the company is understood to have raised certain reservations over the omission of the iron ore swapping clause in the revised pact. While POSCO has verbally agreed not to export iron ore from Orissa, the steel maker has requested the state government to...

-Orissa Diary   The Odisha High Court on Tuesday reserved judgment on a petition seeking quashing of the land acquisition proceedings undertaken for the POSCO steel plant proposed to be set up at Paradip in Jagatsinghpur district. The two-judge bench of Chief Justice V Gopala Gowda and Justice B N Mohapatra reserved judgment after hearing arguments from all sides on the land acquisition proceedings. The two-judge bench had reserved judgment on it on July...