At a time when civil society groups are playing an adversarial role in relation to the Union government, those civil society members who have been given an institutional role in the government have become pro-active: in the last few days, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has written three letters to the government on a range of social sector issues. The three communications relate to the NAC's recommendations on a...

-The Hindustan Times   About 500 activists of five political parties including CPI, CPM, Forward Block, Samajwadi Party and RJD on Monday courted arrest here protesting against land acquisition for Korean steel company Posco’s $12 billion (Rs 54,000) steel plant near Paradip in Jagatsinghpur district. “People who have been staying in the area for generations have been termed by the state government as encroachers. The real encroacher is the state government, which...

Every year, industrial development projects displace about 10 million people globally. In India alone, involuntary resettlement has affected about 50 million people over the last five decades. Three-fourths of them still face an uncertain future. People displaced by such projects are prone to being rendered landless, jobless, homeless and marginalised. Yet, the policies and programmes related to their relocation and rehabilitation are yet to find satisfactory answers to questions like: Is...

Development has a multiplier effect in terms of employm-ent, secondary activity and revenue to state, while delay entails loss for everybody. Tolstoy’s famous question, “How much land does a man require?” was answered when the Count who had ruthlessly exploited his serfs was buried in a grave measuring 7x4x4 feet. And that, Tolstoy concluded, was all the land a man requires. Is corporate and infrastructural greed in India today destroying the small,...

Exasperated with the public perception of its role, the Indian government appears keen to somehow abdicate its key sovereign function of making land available for economic development by dumping it on the private sector. This is wrong. The maintenance of up-to-date land records, the scientific identification of tracts for a shift from agricultural to non-agricultural uses and the smooth transfer of land assets are the functions of the sovereign. The...