-The Indian Express The bullet train project, planned after discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe, is being built with a Rs 88,000-crore soft loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Palghar: As politicians across party lines gathered on stage together in Palghar on Sunday calling for the ambitious Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project to be cancelled, they repeatedly cited the word ‘vikas’, qualifying it with the...

-Hindkisan.com “This amendment is an insult to people who fought hard to secure progressive provisions in the LARR 2013, it weaken people’s power to challenge illegal and unjust forced acquisition of land, and empowers the state and corporations to infringe upon people’s rights over natural resources” read the statement. Various civil society organisations have come together to oppose the recent President’s assent granted to the amendments made in the Andhra Pradesh Land...

-Business Standard/ India Spend Delays in wage payment have been a constant throughout MGNREGS implementation Bachcha Lal’s shirt hung loosely over his frail body, exposing his sunken collarbones, as he stood outside his straw-thatched home in central Uttar Pradesh’s (UP) Bundelkhand region. “They all rely on me,” he said, pointing towards his tubercular son, daughter-in-law and grand-daughter. Illiterate and a landless labourer, 65-year-old Lal makes about Rs 175 a day when he...

  The total number of farm suicides in the country has reduced from 12,602 to 11,370 between 2015 and 2016 viz. a fall by 9.8 percent. This has been revealed recently in a reply by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shri Parshottam Rupala in the Lok Sabha. So, one may wonder why there is such a hue and cry about rural distress and agrarian crisis...

-The Times of India Laduben, 70, of Kuda village in Gujarat's Bhavnagar has waited for more than 20 years to be recognised as a 'farmer' in government records and become the rightful owner of the land she cultivated for years. Laduben's husband passed away when her three daughters were little and she was carrying her fourth child. Her in-laws got her name removed from the family varsai (inheritance document). Her brother-in-law insisted...