May 21 to be observed as ‘protest day' across Orissa  “Naveen Patnaik compromising people's interests for land acquisition” Public meeting to be held at Balitutha to express solidarity with villagers BHUBANESWAR: Several Opposition parties and mass organisations of Orissa on Sunday condemned the police action against villagers opposing the Posco-India's steel project in Jagatsinghpur district. They also warned the Biju Janata Dal government against using police force on innocent people to acquire...

Even as the Orissa government attempts to use force to secure the `Posco area', serious discrepancies have emerged in the submissions made by the state government to the Centre in order to secure the forest clearance for the project. The state government had claimed that the three villages involved had not filed any claims over the forest land under the Forest Rights Act. But TOI has got access to the...

The Andhra Pradesh government has fixed a target to provide compulsory 100 days employment to 3 million households through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) during the financial year 2010-11. Last year, only 1.4 million households were provided with 100-day work in the state. In all, the state is aiming to touch 6.2 million households during the year implying a spend of about Rs 7,000 crore, up 52...

The glitter of growth has added little sparkle to the lives of many peasants and rural workers. Deprivation, discrimination, and disadvantage dominate the everyday lives of large sections in rural Andhra Pradesh, an important new study*finds.  Village studies highlight features of society that are often overlooked and overshadowed by macro-studies of the economy. A recent study presents extraordinarily rich, unusually detailed and intensely disturbing data on agrarian relations, livelihoods, economic...

Tens of millions of dollars have been diverted in India from schemes to fight poverty and used to fund Delhi's Commonwealth Games, a report says. The Housing and Land Rights Network pressure group says its report is based on official documents obtained under India's right to information act. The group says there should be an independent inquiry into how this was allowed to happen. Government officials in Delhi say they are...