In its wisdom, the state giveth and the state taketh away. When it acquires farmlands claiming eminent domain, there is blood on the streets. However, when it quietly bestows largesse on chosen ones, it is barely noticed. At worst there is a lawsuit. There were a dozen lengthy judgments from the Supreme Court in the past two months on land acquisition disputes — a mark of the times. But the biased...

P.V. RAJAGOPAL and Ekta Parishad, the non-governmental organisation he leads, have been championing the cause of land and forest rights of tribal and Dalit communities over the past two decades. The organisation is committed to non-violent, Gandhian forms of struggle and has recorded a number of success stories in ensuring and legitimising the land rights of deprived people, particularly in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Orissa. In this interview to...

A day after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took centre-stage putting his party's weight behind protestors over land acquisition in western Uttar Pradesh, the government on Thursday said it would introduce a new land acquisition bill having provisions for better compensation and rehabilitation measures in the next session of Parliament. "We must have a new land acquisition law. Government has drafted a new act that has provisions for better compensation, rehabilitation and...

Representatives from 127 governments have agreed to add endosulfan to the United Nations' list of persistent organic pollutants to be eliminated worldwide. The action puts the widely-used pesticide on track for elimination from the global market by 2012. The decision was among more than 30 measures taken by Parties to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants to strengthen global action against POPs at their meeting in Geneva last week. The...

That accountability is vital in a democracy was reinforced at a National Convention of the National Campaign for the People's Right to Information held in Shillong recently… If governments do not investigate corruption, people should have the right and power to do so themselves. When the idea of a people's legal right to information took initial shape in the dusty villages of Rajasthan nearly two decades ago amidst people's struggles for...