-The Times of India KOLKATA: The West Bengal Mineral Development & Trading Corporation Ltd will acquire around 2,800 hectares of land for three coal blocks in Burdwan, one of the largest land acquisitions by any state-run agency since Trinamool Congress came to power in Bengal in May 2011. The corporation-which has already been pulled up by the coal ministry for delay in the project's execution-needs to take 1186.83 hectares for the Ichhapur...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Rain and flash floods have pushed back development works in Uttarakhand by decades and the challenge at the moment is to build smarter projects without impacting the fragile environment of the hilly region, said World Bank's country director Onno Ruhl. "In Uttarakhand, the challenge is to build smarter, so that they do not undermine the fragility of the environment," he told PTI after the approval of a $250 million...

-Outlook Shimla: National Agriculture Bank And Rural Development has launched a Warehousing Scheme (NWS) to advance loans to Public and Private sector for creation of storage infrastructure with a corpus of Rs 5,000 crore during 2013-14. "A dedicated scheme for providing assistance for creation of storage infrastructure with a corpus of Rs 5,000 crore has been introduced, pursuant to announcement made by Union Finance minister in current year's budget and the scheme...

-The Hindu Villages get infrastructure to conserve water and recharge wells Madurai: The district's dry pockets in the Usilampatti and Sedapatti blocks are alive with development activity aimed at mitigating the hardship faced by drought-hit farmers. Watershed and percolation ponds are being created in these regions. On the lines of initiatives taken by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and non-governmental organisations, the State government is establishing watershed projects to...

-The Hindustan Times Mumbai: Indian companies have acquired land more than nine times the size of Delhi on foreign shores, as cultivable land at home is lost to urbanisation, industry and Infrastructure projects. Land Matrix, a global land monitoring initiative that tracks land dealings worldwide, placed India among the top 10 countries that have acquired large tracts of land abroad, primarily for agriculture, in Africa and Asia. The country ranks eighth,...