Land acquisitions in India are invariably marked by violent protests. Is politics responsible for stirring up passions? Is it loss of a means of livelihood that landowners resent? Or is there a fundamental problem with the way acquisition is done that stirs up a hornet's nest? Look at the last issue first. There are two fundamental problems with the present system of land acquisition: the process of acquisition, and the...

Conditional cash transfers” (CCTs) are a new buzzword in policy circles. The idea is simple: give poor people cash conditional on good behaviour such as sending children to school. This helps to score two goals in one shot: poor people get some income support, and at the same time, they take steps to lift themselves out of poverty. CCT enthusiasm, however, is often based on a superficial reading of the Latin...

-Express News Service   A team of 13 research scholars from the Centre for Sustainable Technologies, IISc, will now conduct environmental service enhancement assessments at the national level starting from June. These scholars have conducted a study on environmental service enhancement and conservation and vulnerability reduction at Chitradurga district. "Talks are on to start the assessment by the last week of June at Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya. Discussions are...

The income limit for households for qualifying as a beneficiary under the BPL (below poverty line) list has been pegged at about Rs. 27,000 per annum, according to the methodology approved by the Union Cabinet on Thursday. A household with an annual earning of more than Rs. 27,000 will stand excluded from the BPL list. This is what the automatic exclusion and automatic inclusion criteria and the seven deprivation indicators are...

The curiosum of a ‘red regime’ with a knack to get re-elected term after term for over more than three decades within the ambit of a full-fledged multi-party democracy has finally disappeared. The Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has not merely lost the poll in West Bengal, it has been made mincemeat of. Its vote share has come down from close to 50 per cent...