-The Deccan Chronicle   Acquiring farmers’ lands for industrial and other non-agricultural uses has been a cause of tension and unrest in different parts of the country in recent years. If Singur in West Bengal dramatically made history and firmly placed Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamul Congress in the lead in the politics of the state, the recent case of the twin villages of Bhatta-Parsaul at Noida in Uttar Pradesh, not...

-The Telegraph   Mamata Banerjee today provided a sneak preview of her land acquisition policy while announcing plans to build embankments in areas hit by Cyclone Aila in May 2009. She said her government would need to acquire 6,000 acres in the affected parts of the Sunderbans but stressed there would be no forcible acquisition, that market rates would be paid, and that each land-losing family would get a government job. Even before...

Indian farmers have much to celebrate this year with a bumper wheat harvest. As predicted by the ministry of agriculture, wheat farmers have begun to harvest what is shaping up to be a record crop, projected at 84.27 million tonnes. We are growing more wheat than ever before. The earlier record of 80.8 million tonnes of wheat production was achieved in 2009-10. Estimates show that foodgrain production including wheat, rice, pulses...

No one’s buying the government’s desperate arguments to keep the prime minister above Lokpal scrutiny Points Of Friction   Government and civil society representatives have sparred on the question of including the prime minister in the proposed Lokpal Bill on seven key grounds: Point: The Prime Minister is accountable only to Parliament, and to the people of India Counterpoint: Does this mean a PM can never face action for criminal liability, however serious the charge,...

Congress firm but Baba Ramdev, BJP to fight UPA government's “fascism” The Union government swung into damage control mode on Sunday, in the wake of the early morning swoop by the Delhi Police on the Ramlila grounds and the bundling out from the national capital of a trembling yoga guru Baba Ramdev, who had exchanged his saffron garb for a white salwar kameez in the hope of escaping unnoticed. But this...