• Without a clear definition of ‘public purpose’, the land acquisition bill is meaningless • The bill’s definition of ‘fertile land’ can potentially harm the agriculture sector • Government’s role in defining land will create economic and political problems in future As Parliament debates this month it will, hopefully, move beyond issues of corruption in high places to important economic legislation. Two such pieces of legislation are the land acquisition bill and...

While civil society groups in Madhya Pradesh preferred to remain silent over RTI activist Shehla Masood's mysterious death, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh wrote to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan expressing shock at the activist's murder. “I was shocked to read of the shooting of Ms. Shehla Masood...She was young and enthusiastic and I am very sad that she met an untimely end in such a brutal manner,” Mr. Ramesh...

Why we are doing this story     * Tribal lands are under pressure across India. In Orissa, they have been holding out against big corporates like Vedanta and Posco. *** From afar, the fumes rising from factory chimneys in Gujarat’s industrial belt make them seem like skyscrapers on fire. It’s a grey rust-and-chemicals stretch that they call, without irony, the Golden Corridor. It extends all the way from the north of Ahmedabad, through...

-The United Nations   Funding disbursements from donor governments for the AIDS response in low- and middle-income countries dropped overall in 2010, mainly due to a reduction by the largest donor, the United States, the lead United Nations agency tackling the epidemic said today. According to an annual funding analysis carried out by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the Kaiser Family Foundation, donor governments disbursed $6.9 billion in 2010...

-The United Nations   Faced with increased poaching and illegal trade in ivory and horns of elephants and rhinoceroses, 300 government and civil society experts worldwide are seeking to strengthen conservation with new financial mechanisms at a United Nations-backed meeting in Geneva this week. “Innovative financial solutions are required to achieve the huge conservation task before us,” John Scanlon, Secretary-General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and...