West Bengal: Mamata Banerjee moves closer to keeping her promise to return to ‘unwilling' farmers the land given to Tata Motors. WITH the passage of the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Bill, 2011, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee got one step closer to keeping the promise made to the people of Singur that she would reclaim the land allocated to Tata Motors and return it to “unwilling” farmers (that...

The Orissa government suspends the land acquisition for the Posco project in the face of stiff opposition from the people. SIX years ago, when the South Korean steel giant Posco arrived in Orissa with the biggest ever foreign direct investment that had come the country's way, it was expected to help rid the economically backward State of its ‘poor' tag and bring prosperity. Posco had won the $12 billion deal at...

-The Indian Express   We don’t want any more Nandigrams,” said the Supreme Court, hearing the petition on the Allahabad high court’s cancellation of land acquisition projects in Greater Noida, because of the complaint that this land was acquired for industrial purposes and then transferred for residential use. The court also warned the UP government that it would have to intervene if the state relied on the urgency clause to take...

A recent ILO report focusses on the discrimination in employment opportunities and remuneration and wants governments to act. IN recent years, one of the predominant concerns of international organisations, especially those that have a “rights” perspective, has been the impact of the global downturn on various vulnerable sections across the world. Notwithstanding the fact that many countries have signed and ratified conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and are...

Rather than shutting its doors on ‘civil society’, the government should be thanking its stars that the latter wants to make law, not war. Distributing tee-shirts with this slogan would be a better use of the government’s ‘hearts and minds’ funds than the integrated action plan to counter Naxals, or the army’s tourism trips to Pune for Kashmiri schoolgirls. The UPA regime has been unprecedented for the spate of legislation that...