-Frontline The Land Acquisition Bill runs into a roadblock as political parties fail to reach an agreement on the substantive features of the draft Bill or on the amendments proposed. The efforts of the United Progressive Alliance government to broker a consensus on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2012, which has been pending for over a year, have not paid off not because...

-The Hindu The Act grants legal recognition to the rights of traditional forest dwelling communities Jawhar (Thane): The Additional Collector's headquarter here was abuzz even before its gates opened on Monday morning. Around 100 tribals from various villages in the Jawhar tehsil had already queued to begin what they had aptly named as first of its kind ‘RTI Satyagraha' against the alleged unlawful implementation of The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest...

-The Hindu Forest rights campaigners have slammed the satellite image-based study on the implementation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) in Maharashtra as "deeply faulty and obviously biased," arguing that it manipulates data and facts to make a case against the Act. Countering the report which a private company prepared at the behest of the State Forest Department, a critique by Madhu Sarin and others of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity...

-The Hindu Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh made it clear on Friday that two of his ambitious projects - Umeed for empowerment of women and Himayat for capacity building and employment of youth - would be soon extended to all 143 rural development blocks in Jammu and Kashmir. Buoyed by massive response in the four blocks, two each in Kashmir and Jammu divisions, Mr. Ramesh is now planning dovetailing of the...

-Live Mint Farmers resisting India's biggest FDI deal are paying a heavy price for their stand In June 2005, the Orissa government signed the country's biggest foreign direct investment deal yet with the South Korean steel manufacturer Posco for a $12 billion (around `65,856 crore) plant near Paradip in the mineral-rich state. Livelihoods in eight existing agricultural and fishing villages were to give way for the project that was intended to be...