-The Hindu     As the borewells go deeper in Maharashtra, there have been worrying instances of ‘paleo-historic storages' being breached "Only two of them work," says Badri Kharat of his borewells in Roshangaon. That's hard - when you've sunk 36 of them spending millions of rupees, as he has. Kharat, a big landowner and local political personage, has been generous to his neighbours in this village of Jalna district. He pipes in drinking...

-The Times of India A significant part of the Manmohan Singh government's political agenda for the 2014 election looks set to sail through Parliament with an all-party meeting on Thursday putting its seal of approval on a contentious bill on land acquisition that enhances compensation for farmers. The government countered criticism that the bill's provisions make land acquisition more time consuming while pushing up costs, but all major political parties seemed...

-Outlook Jaipur: In an another instance of police high-handedness, a man was allegedly forced to strip before his children in a police station in Sri Ganganagar and his minor daughter was put in a lock-up after he was detained in a land dispute case, prompting police to order a probe. Nandram from Sri Ganganagar district alleged that he was called at Sameja police station on Monday in connection with a complaint against...

-Outlook Development activities including thermal power projects, mining and other polluting industries should not be allowed in a 60,000 sq km ecologically sensitive "natural landscape" of Western Ghats, a mountainous range that passes through six states, a Government panel said today. In its report, the 10-member high-level working group, headed by eminent scientist K Kasturirangan, has not recommended any regulatory mechanism for the remaining 96,000 sq km area of the Western...

-The Guardian Land rights not just issue for developing world as report shows public subsidies help a few firms 'grab' vast tracts of EU land Vast tracts of land in Europe are being "grabbed" by large companies, speculators, wealthy foreign buyers and pension funds in a similar way to in developing countries, according to a major new report. Chinese corporations, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth and hedge funds, as well as Russian oligarchs and...