KEY TRENDS   • Section 105 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, which provides for excluding 13 Central legislation, including Land Acquisition (Mines) Act 1885, Atomic Energy Act, 1962, Railway Act 1989, National Highways Act 1956 and Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act, 1978, from its purview, has been amended for payment of compensation with rigours $ • The amendments have now...

The National Advisory Council's move to restrict universalisation of the PDS to the most disadvantaged districts may ultimately end up limiting its impact. RECENT weeks have seen rather contradictory statements on the challenge of ensuring food security and the set of feasible initiatives for managing the food economy. To start with, the National Advisory Council (NAC), which recognises the need for a universal public distribution system (PDS), and which was expected to...

Wrong policies of the government have been responsible for the prevalent food insecurity in the country, alleged activists. They also said the proposed National Food Security Act ignores the root causes of hunger and it deliberately leaves untouched the structural roots of the malnutrition crisis. Releasing a report on India’s food security scenario and the reasons behind it on Tuesday activist Vandana Shiva said following Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings on self-reliance together...

Development models that focus attention on the poor while expanding job opportunities, increased government spending on social services and aid flows from affluent nations are all successful strategies for alleviating global poverty, the United Nations says. Access to low carbon energy and mobilizing domestic capital by, for example, improving tax collection, are the other factors the UN Development Programme (UNDP) identifies in a new report as crucial factors for the...

The Supreme Court on May 7 ruled that natural resources were national assets that belonged to the people and were ideally exploited by public sector undertakings. This obviously implies that local communities, including tribals, living on mineralised land, enjoy entitlements but not prescriptive ownership rights to such national assets. This is an important reiterative clarification defining mineral rights in Fifth Schedule areas that are currently in contention. Whether PSUs should...