-The Hindu   The Orissa High Court on Friday refused to pass any interim stay with regard to acquisition of forest land by the State government for Posco project but ordered that the status quo with regard to acquisition of private land for the project shall be maintained. The Division Bench of Chief Justice V Gopala Gowda and Justice B N Mohapatra, which had been hearing at least two PILs with regard to...

Private schools may no longer be able to refuse to provide information under the RTI Act under the pretext of being a 'private authority'. The Central Information Commission (CIC), in a recent hearing against a private school, ruled that the school, which receives substantial funds from the government and was controlled by different agencies under the Delhi administration, including the DDA and the Directorate of Education, comes under the ambit...

The global 'farmland grab' in Ethiopia and the rest of Africa has become competitive, with companies from Asia, including India and China, joining it. AN extraordinary new process has been at work in the past few years: the aggressive entry of Indian corporations into the markets for agricultural land in Africa. At one level, this process is simply following the hoary old tradition in global capitalism of firms (often supported...

(Application deadline Friday September 30, 2011) Inclusive Media for Change, a CSDS-based initiative that runs a clearing house of ideas, information and alternatives on India’s rural crises (www.im4change.org), invites applications for media fellowships for journalists in English and Hindi for 2011. The ideal candidates would be willing to spend two to three weeks with rural communities and write series of stories or make radio/ TV programmes on grassroots issues that require...

Is the Bill within the legislative competence of Parliament? Yes. All provisions in Anna Hazare's Jan Lokpal Bill are within the legislative competence of Parliament, including the provisions relating to Lokayuktas in the States. Some confusion is being spread in the media that Parliament cannot enact all the provisions of the Jan Lokpal Bill, particularly those relating to the Lokayuktas in the States, a law for which will have to be...