-Reuters   Clad in white home-spun garments and living in a spartan room of his village's Hindu temple, Anna Hazare is an unlikely thorn in the side of the government hundreds of miles away in New Delhi. And yet for millions of Indians, he is a 21st-century Mahatma Gandhi, inspiring a rare wave of protests against the spiralling corruption that has tarnished the up-and-coming image of Asia's third-largest economy. Like Gandhi, who led India's...

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...

-The Business Standard   Land acquisition for the Posco steel project at Gobindpur and Dhinkia villages may be postponed indefinitely due to stiff resistance from villagers. The district administration’s dilemma on whether or not to resume land acquisition at the trouble-torn villages is compounded by the recent beeline of political leaders, civil right activists and anti-land acquisition proponents to the project site. While Swami Agnivesh and a delegation of the state Congress visited...

Brushing aside protests from a section of landowners, a determined district administration today stepped up its land acquisition drive in Gadakujang and Nuagaon gram panchayats. Simultaneously, the authorities also worked out strategies for taking up the drive in the Dhinkia gram panchayat, the nerve-centre of anti-Posco movement. “The land acquisition process was peaceful barring a few cases where people expressed unwillingness but we managed to prevail over them,” said special land acquisition...

Sustained struggle has enabled tribal and Dalit communities in certain pockets to regain their land rights. COUNTLESS studies conducted over the last three decades by government bodies and land rights organisations underscore that tribal communities have been the worst sufferers of land acquisition in the name of development or industry. Estimates say that 40 per cent of the land acquired for developmental projects and activities since Independence has been from...