Land acquisition and involuntary displacement have been the fountainhead of enormous destitution of millions of invisible people since Independence. Generations of those sacrificed for ‘development’ are farmers and farm workers, and many are fragile tribal people and forest gatherers. By coercive displacement and dispossession, governments pauperise its poorest people, and its food-growers, so that the ‘nation’ can prosper and grow. Rage at persisting State injustice of coercive displacement frequently spills onto...

In the light of fact finding report submitted recently by the Union rural development secretary B K Sinha on the rampant corruption and irregularities in the implementation of the projects under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee, the Centre has warned the Jharkhand government that it would be compelled to discontinue to release funds for rural job guarantee projects under MGNREGS.. In consequence of Centre’s warning, the state government has decided...

After land acquisition and food security, the National Advisory Council (NAC) has set its sights farther, this time to monitor programme implementation at panchayats. The council led by Congress president Sonia Gandhi feels the ministry of statistics and programme implementation is not doing enough to monitor the panchayat programmes, while panchayati raj ministry has little say since most programmes are out of its purview. Monitoring panchayats would be part of an...

On the basis of fact finding report from the Union rural development secretary B K Sinha on rampant corruption and irregularities in operation of rural job schemes in several districts in Jharkhand under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA), the Centre has discontinued in releasing funds to seven districts in the state in the current financial year 2011-12. MGNREGA commissioner in Jharkhand A K Singh confirmed that seven districts –...

The first casualty of the new policy could be NTPC’s proposed plant in Burdwan district West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee may soon announce a new land use policy which says the government will not acquire land for industrial projects, leaving it to project promoters to do so. “They (companies) operate in a market economy, so must deal with market forces. They shouldn’t ask the (state) government to acquire land for them,”...