Chief economic advisor to the finance ministry Kaushik Basu says the government should step in and acquire land for development projects to protect the interests of farmers. He also explains why the government cannot tackle food inflation by distributing free foodgrain among the poor. Excerpts from interview with ET: A large number of land-intensive project have run into opposition. Could it actually undermine our infrastructure thrust and growth? There is...

The 2010 Seeds Bill that has been introduced in Parliament does address some of the major concerns in the aborted 2004 version, but strangely a number of important correctives – on regulation, consistency and punishment – that had been incorporated in the 2008 version (which lapsed in 2009) have now been modified or dropped altogether. What forces are pushing the government to act against the interests of India’s farmers? The third...

The land acquisition officer of Vadodara district has rejected 118 objections to the acquisition of large number of farmers' lands in Vadodara city area and the district, sources said here today. They had made a representation to the officer, who is the competent authority, in the past for not acquiring their fertile lands for the Special Railway Project Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) in Vadodara district of Gujarat. Private agriculture lands of...

The Coal and Environment Ministries have reached a compromise solution on the controversial “no-go” designation of coal mining blocks in forested areas, following the reported intervention of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). Speaking on the sidelines of a function here on Tuesday, Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said that while the final “go areas” will span 30,000 hectares more than his initial proposal, it was also...

Wazirpur, the North Delhi village that recently witnessed three suspected honour killings, is only a stone’s throw away from a big, flashy glass-and-steel mall in the middle-class neighbourhood of Ashok Vihar. But, given the extreme brutality of the recent case, it may as well be a million miles away. Like most urban villages in the Capital, Wazirpur’s economy was at one point completely dependent on agriculture. In 1950, as the...