New land acquisition bill won’t bring relief to tribals Debate over land acquisition for “public purposes” has turned into a chasing game for more compensation. There is political competition over which ruling party gives more money as compensation for land. It has become a “we v them” game. In between we have lost track of the key issues related to land acquisition. This long-standing debate never revolved around compensation alone. To begin...

‘Employment generation’ is the rationale used by every government official from the prime minister to the land acquisition officer to justify the displacement of people for industrial projects. Farmers are aware they are masters of their land but servants of a company. As for compensation, Basu Behera of Noriyasahi, a POSCO project-affected village, said: “I cultivate betel vines, kaju, about 50 quintals of rice yearly and I get coconuts, pineapples, mangoes....

Policies aiming to combat malnutrition are ignoring an entire generation of women whose overall health has a direct bearing on children’s growth, say advocacy groups and researchers Cradling a frail son on her hip and with a plastic bag stuffed with clothes in one hand, Tara Jadam walked into the rehabilitation centre inside the district hospital here to spend the next two weeks. On a hot afternoon, she has walked several miles...

-Reuters   Sitting at the edge of fields in the heart of India's grain bowl, Gurdayal Singh Malik shakes his head in resignation about the lack of workers needed for his 60-acre farm, blaming the government's flagship welfare program, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), for the shortage. Ever since the start of the program, which guarantees 100 days of work a year for rural households, the flow of...

Whether it is in education, health or jobs, there are enormous differences in outcomes in modern India, so much so that it often seems like two countries exist within one. Economic opportunities have undoubtedly expanded for a section of India's population, but there are serious obstacles in the path of many. Nobel laureate and development economist Amartya Sen has written about the 'conversion handicap' which, quite separately from an 'earnings...