-The Times of India   DAVANAGERE: Jana SanGrama Parishat activist Shehanaz called on the farmers of Halligudi in Gadag district warning them against selling their fertile land for Posco steel industry. She was addressing a gathering in Davanagere on Wednesday as part of a state-level awareness procession that started from Raichur on July 9 and will end at Bangalore on July 17. It is being held to create awareness among people...

-The Financial Express   All India Congress Committee general secretary Rahul Gandhi has supported the demand to shift Posco India’s 12 million tonne steel project in Orissa to an alternative site. “If there is adequate non-agriculture land available, then that would be a better alternative,” Rahul Gandhi said. The Orissa Congress is demanding that the project be shifted to a place near Dhinkia where over 7,000 acres of barren land is available....

-The Times of India   Only a handful of officials have read the Mahatma Gandhi national rural employment guarantee Act. That was admitted by the officials, who attended a review meeting on the national rural employment guarantee scheme on Monday. The meeting was convened in the wake of complaints from the elected representatives during a Karnataka Development ProGramme (KDP) review meeting on June 27 when it was established that the district...

Over the last one year, villagers of Ghati in Gadchiroli have kept timber out of the forest department’s reach, saying it belongs to them under the provisions of the FRA, short for Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest-Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act. The FRA recognises their rights only on non-timber minor forest produce but the villagers have interpreted it to include all trees. They say minor forest produces like mahua,...

India registered a good 8.5 percent GDP growth in 2010-11 staving off the global impact of recession mainly due to the major recovery in the agriculture sector. The recorded foodgrain production in 2010-11 was the outcome of the initiatives of the state governments, the union government has now acknowledged. It was an innovation's galore to say the least if one takes into consideration the efforts of the 10 states that went...