BangaloreThe fate of South Korean steelmaker Posco's proposed plant in Karnataka remains uncertain with two groups of farmers holding different views on the project. The government has already assured protesting farmers that the project would not come up in Gadag district. However, it is also waiting to see if the issue can be resolved as a separate group of farmers is offering land for the plant. Karnataka industries minister Murugesh Nirani, who will meet...

An uneasy calm prevailed in the troubled Nuagaon panchayat in the proposed Posco project site today as the district Administration, different village forest committees and irate villagers reassessed the situation after yesterday’s police action during the felling of trees in the area. The police had resorted to lathicharge yesterday on the members of Sanghaipai Mathsahi village forest committee and land losers at Polang while they were opposing the cutting down of...

Last week, the census commissioner released the second round of data, which showed that the move towards towns and cities received a fresh impetus in the decade ended 2011, as a result of which the country achieved a laudable milestone: a little under one in three Indians now lives in areas classified as urban, reversing a lull apparent in the previous two decades. This is something to be welcomed as in...

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's strong criticism of political India for its gross neglect of elementary education over the decades has revived the debate on the quality of school education and also the scope of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 in addressing the problem of “out-of-school” children, who are estimated to number about 14 crore. Speaking at a university function recently in New Delhi, the...

Tension prevailed in the villages where the Naveen Patnaik government is striving to acquire land for the proposed steel plant project of Posco. In Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district villagers protesting land acquisition clashed with police. Eight persons, including six women, were injured when police resorted to lathi charge to disperse villagers who came out of their homes to protest tree cutting by the men engaged by the district Administration to acquire land near...