For third straight day on Sunday, the standoff between protestors and the armed police at Dhinkia village the entry point to Posco project site continued without bloodshed though the Orissa government on Friday had declared the assembly as unlawful and hinted at action if the protesters continued to restrict the officials' movement. Land acquisition officials backed by about 800 armed police have so far not been able to enter the...

Everything is in short supply here, especially hope. There was a flicker of it, though, when on April 30 Prime Minister Manmohan Singhcame here with Rahul Gandhi. Maybe the people were expecting a miracle, an end to the misery created by season after season of bad crops and the resultant rising debt. Their hope proved to be short-lived. Since then, nine farmers have killed themselves in Banda district alone, the...

-The Hindu   The land acquisition process by the Orissa government for the Posco project in the Dhinkia Gram panchayat of Jagatsinghpur district did not make any headway on Saturday following resistance by members of a five-party delegation and villagers. The Gram panchayat remained a hostile region for the district administration that had in the past fortnight stepped up the land acquisition process for the steel plant. With children and women at the...

Obituaries for the PDS system are a bit premature, based as they are on outdated data and presumptions. Despite flaws like pilfering and leakages, the system shows signs of improvement in certain states. States have demonstrated the political will to invest in the PDS, by putting in state resources to make it work. Cash transfers (CTs) are increasingly advocated as an alternative to the Public Distribution System (PDS). The proponents of...

After two weeks of smooth land acquisition for Posco’s 12-million tonne steel plant in Jagatsinghpur, the district administration faced massive protests at Dhinkia, the epicentre of anti-Posco protests, as hundreds of children and women prostrated, preventing the entry of police and land acquisition officials. The land acquisition drive started on May 18 and so far, the district administration has acquired about 1,300 acres in Nuagaon and Gadakujang Grampanchayats. But the district...