The Supreme Court has clarified that land-losers can challenge the compensation awarded by a collector within six months of “coming to know of it” to avoid “unreasonable discrimination”. Till now, an application for higher compensation had to be filed within six months of the collector announcing the award. The ruling came on appeals filed by some Uttar Pradesh villagers against a high court judgment that rejected their plea for a review. Permitting the...

The MoU is also intended to give a push to private investment in agriculture  The government last week quietly secured Cabinet approval for a new agreement with the United States that aims, inter alia, at promoting the privatisation of agricultural extension services and facilitating collaborations between American agribusiness and the Indian farm sector. The proposed Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. on ‘Agriculture Cooperation and Food Security’ was approved on...

After the suspicion and hostility of a few held up the introduction of Bt brinjal, the prime minister’s economic advisory council has stepped in to provide some good sense. In the context of Bt cotton’s success, the council recommended farm evaluations and a comprehensive risk analysis of GM crops, the results of which should be brought into the public domain as soon as possible. In India, the Bt brinjal case...

A revenue court in Vidarbha has issued orders restoring a disputed piece of land to a poor farmer who alleged that six relatives of President Pratibha Patil, including her husband Devisinh Shekhawat, had tried to illegally transfer the plot in their names. Ashok Amankar, the sub-divisional officer (SDO) of Daryapur, who has quasi-judicial powers, issued orders stating that the names of Devisinh, his sister-in-law Siddeshwar Lalsinh Shekhawat, her sons Bhanwarsinh, Kishoresinh...

The heat generated in the media on climate change issues has been put off by a cold winter. However, R.K. Pachauri of The Energy Research Institute (TERI), the leading climate change expert has suffered some burns. Allegations of financial dealings with corporations that are the biggest polluters and violators of good environmental practices have left him groping for cover. In his defence, he makes many separations — of himself as...