The government is thinking of bringing in a law that would allow the National Investigation Agency to probe cases of illegal mining. The proposal for arming the NIA with this power had come from the Prime Minister’s Office. Sources said the objective was to enable the Centre to break the “mining mafia”. If passed, the proposed legislation will also enable the government to scrap leases of companies engaged in illegal operations, like...

The steady progress of the monsoons ought to refocus policy attention on India's deeply stressed water economy . There are fast rising demands on water resources generally, together with poorly governed supply systems, with the result that overall balances are precarious. What is worse, there's increasingly reckless mining of groundwater, and aquifer depletion is concentrated in many of the most populated and economically significant areas. Now, we have a highly...

Take a look at the accompanying map and you can’t but notice the extent of overlap between India’s thickly forested areas, the regions with the bulk of the country’s most important mineral wealth and the territory over which Maoists are dominant. Is this just a coincidence? No, that would stretch credulity. So what connects the Maoist menace with forests and mining? Clearly, forests give a guerilla force its best chance...

A tussle between the Chhattisgarh government and the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) over an elephant reserve has reached the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). And the dispute is emblematic of the way the richly forested state is hurtling to get the developed tag by shaving off its pristine tree cover. Since 2004, the Chhattisgarh government has signed 102 memorandum of understandings (MOUs) with industrial houses for production of steel,...

The proposed land acquisition Bill should adopt scores of suggestions coming from judges. Few laws have drawn criticism from the Supreme Court with such regular frequency as has the Land Acquisition Act, all the more so in recent times as the weak links in the archaic law have led to continuing legal and political battles and bloodletting. Last month, the Supreme Court identified five areas of conflict arising from the inadequacies of...