-Down to Earth Government takes ordinance route to clear Bill, allowing foreign companies to bid for mineral resources The BJP-led Central government has cleared an ordinance to facilitate the auction of minerals, including ores used to produce iron, manganese and aluminium. In a cabinet meeting on Monday, the government approved amendments to the 57-year old Mines and Mineral (Development and Regulation) Act. Among other changes, the amendments will allow multinational companies such...

The tribal or the Scheduled Tribe communities constitute only 8.6 percent of India's population and yet, they are around 40 percent of those displaced due to ‘development’ projects. In the midst of a raging debate on the new Land AcquiSITion Ordinance, a new report brings out many such paradoxes of development versus displacement of India’s indigenous or Adivasi people. The report exposes the anomalies of land alienation, displacement and forced...

-The Hindu Business Line Unlike in the 1970s, the moral outrage over glaring differences has given way to an aspirational ethos For those who have lived in Indian cities long enough, it is difficult to miss the remarkable change in people's tolerance of economic inequality. Back in the 1970s, economic inequality was a major part of the urban discourse. The various dimensions of inequality dominated coffee house discussions, theatre and even popular cinema, contributing...

-Business Standard The ordinance has returned near absolute power of discretion in land acquiSITion, except in tribal areas, into the hands of the bureaucracy yet again Even after the National Democratic Alliance's land ordinance, governments will still need the consent of tribal gram sabhas in all Schedule V and VI areas of the country before acquiring land for themselves or for public-private projects. While the land ordinance has done away with the need...

-The Guardian Universal healthcare is often presented as an idealistic goal that remains out of reach for all but the richest nations. That's not the case, writes Amartya Sen. Look at what has been achieved in Rwanda, Thailand and Bangladesh Twenty-five hundred years ago, the young Gautama Buddha left his princely home, in the foothills of the Himalayas, in a state of agitation and agony. What was he so distressed about?...