Land acquisition and involuntary displacement have been the fountainhead of enormous destitution of millions of invisible people since Independence. Generations of those sacrificed for ‘development’ are farmers and farm workers, and many are fragile tribal people and forest gatherers. By coercive displacement and dispossession, governments pauperise its poorest people, and its food-growers, so that the ‘nation’ can prosper and grow. Rage at persisting State injustice of coercive displacement frequently spills onto...

Development has a multiplier effect in terms of employm-ent, secondary activity and revenue to state, while delay entails loss for everybody. Tolstoy’s famous question, “How much land does a man require?” was answered when the Count who had ruthlessly exploited his serfs was buried in a grave measuring 7x4x4 feet. And that, Tolstoy concluded, was all the land a man requires. Is corporate and infrastructural greed in India today destroying the small,...

The farmers' struggle against land acquisition only shows that from passive forms of protest they have turned to active forms of resistance. THE recent agitation by farmers in Uttar Pradesh against cropland acquisition for non-agricultural purposes is only the latest in a long series of protests by farmers and rural communities, which started a decade ago in different parts of the country and which gathered momentum over the past five...

TARN TARAN, India—India's northern state of Punjab was once a symbol of the nation's economic progress, its advances in agriculture lauded world-wide as a spectacular feat that made India self-sufficient in food production. But Punjab today faces a grave economic crisis, the result of years of shoddy governance that have stunted growth and created such a mound of public debt that the state is now seeking a multibillion dollar bailout from...

Archaic labour laws are not affecting India's manufacturing sector as much as problems related to land, water, licences and clearances, a government panel's study shows. With the findings of the Planning Commission study, changing rigid labour laws, so far suspected to be the main hurdle before the manufacturing sector, is likely to drop on the government's list of priorities. The sector contributes 15% to India's GDP. "Against popular perception, we...