-The Hindu Kolkata: At a time when the Trinamool Congress-led West Bengal government has a strained relationship with the Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre, a report by the Labour Bureau of India suggested that Bengal's employment rate was on the rise. According to the TMC's official website, the fourth Annual Employment-Unemployment Survey Report revealed that the unemployment rate in 2014 fell to 52 from 74 in 2012-13, the lowest since the...

-Deccan Herald Hassan: Food and Civil Supplies Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao said the department was chalking out various plans like supplying ragi and jowar to the ration card holders, which would be finalised soon. Addressing Media persons after inspecting the maize procurement centre and the godowns at the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee yard during his visit to Hassan, on Tuesday, he said that the department had been purchasing ragi, providing support...

The tribal or the Scheduled Tribe communities constitute only 8.6 percent of India's population and yet, they are around 40 percent of those displaced due to ‘development’ projects. In the midst of a raging debate on the new Land Acquisition Ordinance, a new report brings out many such paradoxes of development versus displacement of India’s indigenous or Adivasi people. The report exposes the anomalies of land alienation, displacement and forced...

-Business Standard The ordinance has returned near absolute power of discretion in land acquisition, except in tribal areas, into the hands of the bureaucracy yet again Even after the National Democratic Alliance's land ordinance, governments will still need the consent of tribal gram sabhas in all Schedule V and VI areas of the country before acquiring land for themselves or for public-private projects. While the land ordinance has done away with the need...

-The Hindu They also demand continuation of old age pension DINDIGUL (Tamil Nadu): The All India Farmers' Association has strongly condemned the Central government's move to scale down allocation of grant for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and the inordinate delay in settling old age pension (OAP) to beneficiaries. It has planned to campaign in all villages against the Centre from December 2 to 5 and lay a siege...