Land is contentious. With urbanisation and demand for non-agricultural use, coupled with lack of employment and skills for those in small-holder and subsistence-level agriculture, this is understandable. In western Europe, especially in Britain, and more especially in England, land markets were freed up before the Industrial Revolution and access to education and skills became more broad-based. We haven't introduced reforms that enable people to move out of agriculture, or diversify...

The Orissa government suspends the land acquisition for the Posco project in the face of stiff opposition from the people. SIX years ago, when the South Korean steel giant Posco arrived in Orissa with the biggest ever foreign direct investment that had come the country's way, it was expected to help rid the economically backward State of its ‘poor' tag and bring prosperity. Posco had won the $12 billion deal at...

  Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...

The Government proposal to make cash transfer in place of food grain to poor families has drawn mixed reactions. Raghuvir Nagar on the western outskirts of Delhi has of late turned into a turf for a war between two schools of thought. The war has not been limited to campaigns and debates and purportedly escalated to the level of allegations, even intimidation, so much so that the Government of the national...

-The Hindustan Times   About 500 activists of five political parties including CPI, CPM, Forward Block, Samajwadi Party and RJD on Monday courted arrest here protesting against land acquisition for Korean steel company Posco’s $12 billion (Rs 54,000) steel plant near Paradip in Jagatsinghpur district. “People who have been staying in the area for generations have been termed by the state government as encroachers. The real encroacher is the state government, which...