The 9900-MWe Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project has received environmental clearance, but with quite a few strings attached. Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh announced the clearance with 35 conditions and safeguards during a press conference here on Sunday. Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan termed it a historic day and said that the project would see an investment of Rs. 1 lakh crore. “It is the largest engineering project...

Fifty thousand jobs? The U.S. economy has lost that many every week, on average, for a straight 140 weeks since December 2007. Now that the media's gush and drool over the Obama visit has run dry — thanks to other far more interesting events — it might be worth looking at a couple of ‘outcomes' that much of our media seemed pretty taken with.‘Twenty deals worth 10 billion dollars that create...

The land acquisition process for Haryana’s first nuclear power plant has started at Gorakhpur village (around 175 km from Delhi) in Fatehabad district. The site has been finalised by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) for setting up the state’s first 4X700 mw nuclear power plant. As per the officials of Haryana Power Generation Corporation (HPGCL)—the nodal agency for the project—the land acquisition officer has already started issuing notices...

  The sea change that India’s national scheme for rural employment guarantee has accomplished is hard to fathom, its vastness touching the lives or more than 100 million people. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, subsequently renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, or MGNREGA) was a landmark in Indian legislation. Under the act, as of April 2008, for the first time in India’s history, all rural citizens have a legal right...

In three districts of Haryana, they have been agitating against the land acquisition policy of the State government. WHEN farmers of western Uttar Pradesh took to the streets protesting against the acquisition of their lands and demanding a just compensation package from the State government, the central leadership of the Congress was quick to cite the example of Haryana, where, according to United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi, the best policies...