Every year, industrial development projects displace about 10 million people globally. In India alone, involuntary resettlement has affected about 50 million people over the last five decades. Three-fourths of them still face an uncertain future. People displaced by such projects are prone to being rendered landless, jobless, homeless and marginalised. Yet, the policies and programmes related to their relocation and rehabilitation are yet to find satisfactory answers to questions like: Is...

-The Telegraph   Mamata Banerjee today provided a sneak preview of her land acquisition policy while announcing plans to build embankments in areas hit by Cyclone Aila in May 2009. She said her government would need to acquire 6,000 acres in the affected parts of the Sunderbans but stressed there would be no forcible acquisition, that market rates would be paid, and that each land-losing family would get a government job. Even before...

Brushing aside protests from a section of landowners, a determined district administration today stepped up its land acquisition drive in Gadakujang and Nuagaon gram panchayats. Simultaneously, the authorities also worked out strategies for taking up the drive in the Dhinkia gram panchayat, the nerve-centre of anti-Posco movement. “The land acquisition process was peaceful barring a few cases where people expressed unwillingness but we managed to prevail over them,” said special land acquisition...

The Orissa government on Friday came down heavily on anti- Posco protesters by arresting 18 villagers, including a prominent anti-Posco leader, and carried on with its land acquisition drive for the South Korean steel major's 12 million tonnes steel plant near Paradip. The government officials also seized a betel vine belonging to Basudev Behera, one of the leaders of the Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS). The police detained Behera in...

Tension prevailed in the area chosen for the proposed Posco steel project in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur on Friday after 17 persons opposing land acquisition for the venture were taken into custody. They include Basudev Behera, Panchayat Samiti member of Gadakujang gram panchayat and vice-president of Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti, the organisation leading the anti-Posco agitation since 2005, four women and five children. The villagers, who were picked up by the policemen from Noliasahi...