The first casualty of the new policy could be NTPC’s proposed plant in Burdwan district West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee may soon announce a new Land Use policy which says the government will not acquire land for industrial projects, leaving it to project promoters to do so. “They (companies) operate in a market economy, so must deal with market forces. They shouldn’t ask the (state) government to acquire land for them,”...

The Union Ministry of Rural Development has eventually finalised the revised draft of the bills on land acquisition and rehabilitation and resettlement, which promise to return land to the farmer if a proposed project fails to come up within five years of acquisition. Minister for Rural Development Vilasrao Deshmukh told The Hindu that the Land Acquisition Bill and the Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill were sent to the Ministry of Law for...

‘Employment generation’ is the rationale used by every government official from the prime minister to the land acquisition officer to justify the displacement of people for industrial projects. Farmers are aware they are masters of their land but servants of a company. As for compensation, Basu Behera of Noriyasahi, a POSCO project-affected village, said: “I cultivate betel vines, kaju, about 50 quintals of rice yearly and I get coconuts, pineapples, mangoes....

There is nothing wrong in having advisory groups. But there is a problem when groups not constituted legally cross the line of demands, advice and rights-based, democratic agitation. The 1990s saw marketing whiz kids at the largest English daily in the world steal a term then in vogue among sexually discriminated minorities: PLUs — or People Like Us. Media content would henceforth be for People Like Us. This served advertisers' needs...

The Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti on Tuesday contested Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's claim that no force was being used to acquire land for the proposed steel project of Posco as his government was for peaceful industrialisation. “The Chief Minister is telling lies,” said Prashant Paikray, spokesperson of the Samiti, which has been strongly opposing establishment of the mega steel plant that would affect the lives and livelihoods of thousands of...