Bhatta Parsaul was once a quiet farming village but now, as it finds itself at the centre of a major political row, it is strewn with mounds of ash, burnt-out motorcycles, tractors and cars. In early May villagers here clashed with armed police who tried to break up a four-month-old sit-in protest at the village. They had been fighting the terms of the acquisition of their farmland in the Greater Noida...

In Greater Noida, farmers resist fiercely attempts to take over their land for the Yamuna expressway and a hi-tech city. IT is a tale of two worlds, one in the present and the other in the future; one living and breathing and toiling away in parts of the National Capital Region and the other beautifully blueprinted and waiting to be willed into reality by the government and its elites in...

The National Commission for Women (NCW) on Saturday backed Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi's claim of mass killing and rape by the police in Greater Noida villages after protests over land acquisition. The NCW alleged that women were molested, stripped and raped and people were burnt alive, and sought a CBI probe to “bring out the truth.” The charge came a day after the All-India Democratic Women's Association said it found...

“Poor farmers could not fathom why they were beaten up, their houses set afire” Starting from where he left off in Bhatta-Parsaul and emboldened by the success of the Congress campaign against the Mayawati government on the land acquisition issue, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said, “there will be a Bhatta-Parsaul in every village,” to ensure the government's downfall. “The Congress will fight the government at the ground zero...

Some time before the Manmohan Singh regime imploded in the mass of corruption scandals that are currently regaling television audiences, Manish Tiwari, the Congress member of parliament and spokesperson, was participating in a televised programme on political parties and their attitudes to corruption. Someone asked why the Congress had given a parliamentary ticket to Mohammed Azharuddin, the former Indian cricket captain found guilty of match-fixing and banned for life from...