The Centre’s proposed land acquisition law will include a provision to create a land bank, one of the key demands made by Mamata Banerjee. Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh will meet the Bengal chief minister in Calcutta tomorrow and inform her about the provisions of the redrafted bill, which the Union cabinet is to take up on Monday. Mamata has been advocating the creation of a land bank that would specify areas...

'We want to pressure the government and assert our rights as citizens.' Arvind Kejriwal received the Magsaysay award in the Emergent leadership category in 2006. A mere five years later, he has far surpassed that milestone, winning acclaim and notice for the way he conceived and crafted Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement. He talks to Vidya Subrahmaniam about the Jan Lokpal campaign, what it accomplished and why it often became controversial. The scale...

The Centre’s flagship welfare plan has failed to turn the tide on a key problem: rural migration. The disconcerting admission about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or MNREGA, came in a paper released today by Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh on the main challenges facing the programme and the reforms required. Checking distress migration is a key objective of the scheme, other than providing at least 100 days...

Ankaji Bhai Gangar, a 49-year-old subsistence farmer, stood in line in this remote village until, for the first time in his life, he squinted into the soft glow of a computer screen. His name, year of birth and address were recorded. A worker guided Mr. Gangar’s rough fingers to the glowing green surface of a scanner to record his fingerprints. He peered into an iris scanner shaped like binoculars that...

Gandhi’s struggle was to get Indians to choose their destiny, not letting a moralist to decide on their behalf During the 12 days of melodrama when India apparently solved the problem of corruption, one claim Kisan Baburao Hazare​’s followers consistently made was that his fast was a non-violent, Gandhian protest. If MoHAndas Gandhi could go on a fast-unto-death to force a government to relent, so could Hazare. Hazare’s media-savvy handlers ensured that...