When all failed, a police lathicharge did the trick. Farmers of Akaltara village were protesting against land acquisition for a month, but only after the police beat them up and arrested 78 men on a cold January evening, that things heated up. Opposition leaders rushed to the site and the government was forced to react. From Rs 8 lakh, compensation rates were hiked to Rs 17 lakh per acre. The...

The West Bengal govt's role as a non-market intermediary in an essentially private land transaction is questionable The West Bengal government has passed a new legislation that transfers the land back to those who refused to accept the compensation that they were offered during the acquisition of their lands for the Tata Nano factory. The Tata group has promptly gone to court claiming that this is an unconstitutional Act. Surely one...

-The Economic Times   All public data-from that on glacier meltdowns to monsoon charts to benami land--will be freely available at the click of a mouse with the launch of a national data portal next month. Modeled on US chief information officer Vivek Kundra's Data.gov.us project, the science and technology ministry's portal-- data.gov.in--aims to democratize data, and make the government more "open". "We plan to launch data.gov.in by next month. Once the National...

The Assam Government on Thursday ordered an additional Chief Secretary-level probe into Wednesday's incidents in the city, where anti-eviction protesters went on the rampage and the police opened fire, resulting in the death of three persons. The government directed the administration to gather video footage of the incidents and initiate legal action against protesters who came armed with lathis and stones and indulged in violence, causing damage to public and private...

-NDTV   A board outside a temple for the Goddess Kali orders Dalits to stop at this point. "Harijans can pray from here," it declares. The warning sign was put up in August last year after three schoolgirls entered the shrine to offer Prasad to the Goddess, an icon of empowerment and Shakti. The caretaker of the temple in Orissa's Puri district offers no apologies for the discrimination. "It is against tradition,"...