The Posco project has turned into a political hot potato with the two main Opposition parties trying to extract as much out of it as possible, hoping the Rs 51000 crore project turns into another Singur. At a time when Naveen Patnaik government finds itself embroiled in a number of unsavoury controversies, including horse trading during the Rajya Sabha elections, the Congress and the BJP are looking to deliver the coup...

The state of environment report released by UP environment directorate says more and more of prime agricultural land is getting diverted to non-agricultural uses in the state. "Land is under severe pressure and has been subjected to many kinds of degradation", says the report Strangely, the number of very small land holdings has gone up considerably. The report highlights need for integrated land and water management including drainage for preventing further...

Amid no clear consensus emerging on the proposed Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, the government is likely to move an “open-ended” draft law in Parliament’s Monsoon Session, earmarking 40 to 45 per cent of the net sown area as “reserved agricultural zone” in which there can be no change in land use for at least 10 years. In a move to ensure that agricultural produce is not affected by toxic contamination, the...

The first casualty of the new policy could be NTPC’s proposed plant in Burdwan district West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee may soon announce a new land use policy which says the government will not acquire land for industrial projects, leaving it to project promoters to do so. “They (companies) operate in a market economy, so must deal with market forces. They shouldn’t ask the (state) government to acquire land for them,”...

A recent study finds that selective abortion of girls, especially for pregnancies after a firstborn girl, has increased substantially in India. CENSUS 2011, which brought out several positive features with regard to education, literacy and fertility rates, also confirmed the disturbing trend that had been reported for the first time in the 1991 Census – the increasing gap between the figures for male and female children in the 0-6 age...