In the first of a series of reports on land rights, we look at the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where there have been violent clashes between local villagers and police in a dispute over land. It's a hot summer day and the air is thick with smoke from the diesel-powered trucks carrying bricks, cement and sand. There is a long line of vehicles along the road as the trucks jostle...

The farmers' agitation in Uttar Pradesh brings into focus the indiscriminate acquisition of land by the state for corporate-led development. ON May 19, three days before the formal observation of the second anniversary of the United Progressive Alliance government, Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi made a categorical announcement that in the monsoon session of Parliament scheduled to begin in July the ruling coalition would bring in legislation that...

Singur , Greater Noida , Posco, Jaitapur and so on. The issue of land acquisition seems to now have acquired dimensions which political parties are finding it difficult to deal with. As each state faces political problems, it has tried to pass on the buck to the Centre arguing that they are merely doing what the central Land Acquisition Act 1894 (the Act) allows them to do. The implication is that...

In Greater Noida, farmers resist fiercely attempts to take over their land for the Yamuna Expressway and a hi-tech city. IT is a tale of two worlds, one in the present and the other in the future; one living and breathing and toiling away in parts of the National Capital Region and the other beautifully blueprinted and waiting to be willed into reality by the government and its elites in...

Giving the police a slip, Rahul Gandhi rode pillion on a motorcycle just before dawn on Wednesday to the epicentre of violent clashes in this district and met farmers protesting Uttar Pradesh government's land acquisition policy. The strong police force deployed at the Bhatta Parsaul village, which witnessed violent clashes between the police and farmers, apparently failed to notice the Congress general secretary when he reached the Delhi suburb in...