-The Business Standard   The Supreme Court decision banning both mining and movement of ore in Bellary district in Karnataka, following the Lok Ayukta report, is excessive. The blanket ban penalises even those who did nothing wrong. While the outrage over the illegal profiteering of over Rs 12,000 crore by a politician-operator-bureaucrat combine is understandable, applying the brakes on all mining and related activity in the district is an undifferentiated response. The...

-The Economic Times   The latest forecast of the Met office suggesting a weakening of the south-west monsoon during the second half of the monsoon season is not cause for panic. It is the distribution of rainfall across space and time rather than the aggregate percentages that matter for the farm sector. The good news is that both the spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall has been satisfactory so far. A good reservoir...

Vicky Nanjappa goes through Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde's explosive report on illegal mining in the state and reveals damning figures of corruption. A jaw-dropping Rs 12,228 crore worth of Iron ore was illegally exported in a a span of four years (2006-2010), says Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Santhosh Hegde in his report released a couple of days back which led to Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa's exit. According to the report, which...

The Orissa government has failed to keep its commitment for renewal of the revised MoU with Posco-India Ltd for setting up 12-million ton steel plant near Paradip by July end as the South Korean company has not agreed to certain conditions in the revised MoU. Even as the tenure of the previous MoU expired on June 21, 2010, the state government had gone on acquiring land for the proposed steel...

-The Hindustan Times   After farmers, the Central government is looking for a higher compensation regime for forestland acquired from tribals and forest dwellers for various projects. The move comes after the rural development ministry issued a draft land acquisition bill providing for market-linked compensation to farmers and the demand by tribal groups for a national policy on the rehabilitation of tribals displaced by large-scale mining across India to end lop-sided growth....