-People's Democracy IT seems the Sheila Dixit government of Delhi, backed by powerful elements in the UPA-2 central government, will let nothing stand in the way of water privatisation in the capital. Several earlier attempts going back many years to fully or partially privatise distribution of water, especially the big loan application to the World Bank in 2005, were foiled by vigilant community organisations, public interest groups, trade unions and political...

-The Telegraph Buniadpur, Aug. 31: Mamata Banerjee, who has chosen to keep the state’s hands off land acquisition, today appealed to villagers in South Dinajpur for plots to set up anganwadi centres and hinted that the government was finding it difficult to get land. The chief minister, while speaking about acquiring land for an AIIMS-like hospital, has told a rally in Itahar yesterday that she would not “put a gun to a...

-The Hindu The Madras High Court on Friday cleared the decks for the commissioning of Units I and II of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP), holding that there was no impediment to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd to proceed with the project. However, it made it clear that the regulatory authorities should periodically oversee the compliance and maintenance of standards of pollution. “By taking note of the overall situation,...

-PTI Two hundred and fifty people of two Tripura villages were displaced when a portion of an embankment of Kakri river was washed away in flash floods, official sources said today. Gobindapur and Hurua villages of North Tripura district were submerged when a portion of the embankment was washed away in the flash flood triggered by incessant rain yesterday displacing the people belonging to 76 families, the sources said. The displaced have taken...

-The Hindustan Times The country is once again dangerously adrift in a stormy sea of competitive hate politics. The signs are both ominous and familiar — the systematic creation of hatred against people because of their ethnicity or religion; rumours and hate propaganda choking the internet; the public moral justification of violence against targeted communities on grounds of ‘larger’ alleged wrongs; and weak-kneed State action against people and organisations which preach...