Among the various definitions of "noise" is this one: "Something that draws public notice". And "Making Noise" is precisely what groups all over India are doing, or planning to do, in the days ahead in order to wake up the government to its promises. In the year 2000, India was among the countries that had signed on to achieve, by 2015, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These goals...

Two days after the government scrapped a bauxite mining project in Orissa, Rahul Gandhi visited Niyamgiri, the ground zero of the anti-mine protests and told tribals that he was their sipahi in Delhi. Around the same time, farmers in Uttar Pradesh said they wouldn’t sell their land at the rates the government was offering. India is growing fast, but hassles over the acquisition of land are going to be the...

Apni kheti, apna khaad / Apna beej, apna swaad (Our own farm, our own fertiliser / Our own seeds, our own taste) -- Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi. A farmer from Tandia village in Varanasi has a solution to India's burgeoning food crisis. In a land where poverty, hunger, malnutrition and farmer suicides are rampant, Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi's innovation could work wonders. He has single-handedly developed a number of high yielding, nutritious...

Taking over farmers' lands without following due procedure akin to state-sponsored terrorism: judge The Supreme Court on Monday slammed the land acquisition policy of the Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh and said any acquisition that deprived farmers of their land without following the due procedure was akin to “state-sponsored terrorism.” A Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly was hearing appeals filed by farmers challenging the Allahabad High Court order upholding...

The Supreme Court today held that any land acquisition depriving farmers of their “land, livelihood and way of life” without following due process was akin to “state-sponsored terrorism”. Slamming the Uttar Pradesh government’s land acquisition process, a two-judge bench headed by Justice G.S. Singhvi observed: “Throwing out villagers from their land and taking away their livelihood and way of life is state-sponsored terrorism.” The top court was hearing an appeal by some...