-The Times of India   The government is set to accept the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council's recommendation to cover 75% rural and 50% urban population under a food security law, but wants to keep the percentages outside the language of the Act itself. UPA-2 is inclined to set the percentage of population covered in a notification or schedule accompanying the Act so that it can be revised by executive order...

The impasse over land acquisition for the Posco project cast a shadow on Rath Yatra festivities in Dhinkia gram panchayat area in Jagatsinghpur district on Sunday. The number of villagers thronging the annual car festival at the Jagannath temple at Gadakujang had reduced drastically, pointing to the uncertainty prevailing among the people in the area. "The residents of Dhinkia, Gobindapur, Patana, Trilochanpur and other villages are now oscillating between despair...

Boommi Gowda used to fear the night. Her vision fogged by glaucoma, she could not see by just the dim glow of a kerosene lamp, so she avoided going outside where king cobras slithered freely and tigers carried off neighborhood dogs. But things have changed at Gowda's home in the remote southern village of Nada. A solar-powered lamp pours white light across the front of the mud-walled hut she shares with...

-The Telegraph   Industries minister Partha Chatterjee today asked the Hooghly administration to hurry up and complete the Singur land survey in three days, working through the nights if necessary. Sources said the Bengal government was keen to wrap up all the paperwork so that the plots could be immediately handed over to farmers if Calcutta High Court ruled in the state’s favour. “I want the survey completed within three days. If necessary,...

Andhra farmers shun growing paddy this kharif in absence of buyers, storage space Achanta, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, hit the headlines in 1967 with a record rice yield in the kharif or monsoon crop season. It was the time of the Green Revolution. N Subba Rao, a farmer from the village, harvested three tonnes of paddy from just one kilogramme of seeds. Other farmers followed suit and the village...