-The Business Standard   Government today said the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill will include the recommendations made by Sonia Gandhi-led NAC, and once passed, the legislation will ensure that there are "no more Singurs" in the country. "The recommendations of the NAC will be included in the Land Acquisition bill...There will be no more Singurs. It will support the aspirations of the people," Law Minister M Veerappa Moily told reporters here. The Law...

-Express News Service   The Centre said on Monday the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill would include the recommendations made by Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC), and, once passed, the legislation would ensure that there are “no more Singurs” in the country. The NAC has prescribed a seven-point test for a having a humane legislation on land acquisition and rehabilitation. “The recent recommendations of the NAC will be included in the Land...

The episodes of violence in land acquisition by the government, as witnessed recently in Bhatta-Parsaul in Uttar Pradesh and in other states earlier, occur because patterns of violence are inbuilt into the process. Despite a bill pending in Parliament since 2007, there has been little effort by political parties to evolve a consensus on acquisition of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. The law as at present and also the provisions...

  Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...

-The Business Standard   Remember the food riots of 2008? Is the world heading towards another food crisis? That, worryingly, seems to be the conclusion that a new publication on food prices and availability in the next decade (2011-20), issued jointly by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), arrives at. The OECD-FAO report forecasts agricultural commodity prices, in real terms,...