-IANS   Civil rights campaigners in Manipur are upset with the mainstream media for blowing up activist Anna Hazare's anti-graft fast that entered its sixth day on Sunday and ignoring the over decade-long hunger strike by Irom Chanu Sharmila against rights violations by the security forces in the region. "There is a general sense of feeling that we, the people of the northeast, have always been neglected, discriminated, and looked down upon by...

Ordinance makes SPOs an ‘auxiliary force' In the last week of July, the Chhattisgarh government passed an ordinance that sought to dispel the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the State's 5,269 registered Special Police Officers (SPOs) who operate as the vanguard of the government's battle against the guerilla army of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). On July 5, the Supreme Court directed the State government to “immediately cease and desist...

-The Times of India   KENDRAPADA: Right to Information campaigner and Magsaysay award winner Aruna Roy has asked the state government to stop construction and tree felling works for the proposed steel plant of Posco in the seaside gram panchayats of Dhinkia, Nuagaon and Gadakujang in Jagatsinghpur district and have a public debate on the issue. Roy visited the villages in the proposed steel plant site on Sunday in support of the...

CGNet Swara in Chhattisgarh is a mobile radio platform that has helped bring tribal issues to national attention. MAHADEV SINGH, a Baiga tribal person, hails from a village situated atop a forested hill near Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh. While most of the neighbouring villages are electrified and welfare schemes from the government reach them to an extent, Mahadev's village has lost out in this regard owing to its inaccessibility. Mahadev and his...

The country’s first legislation on land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement is out as a first draft. Here is a sharp critique of the bill THE GOVERNMENT has made public the new Draft National Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation & Resettlement Bill, 2011, which FW has run in these columns over three days. This is what I think of it. In terms of the definition of public purpose, the Bill is more colonial...