For decades, the victims of communal and targeted violence have been denied protections of law that the rest of us take for granted. It's time to end this injustice. In a vibrant and mature democracy, there would be no need to have special laws to prosecute the powerful or protect the weak. If a crime takes place, the law would simply take its course. In a country like ours, however, life...

Talks fail; Hazare threatens fast from August 16 The Joint Drafting Committee on the Lokpal Bill ended its deliberations on Tuesday without a common text, and the government has decided to go ahead with its plan of consulting political parties and Chief Ministers on the two different versions before getting the Cabinet to clear a final draft. Expressing “deep disappointment” at what it said was the government's watered down version of a...

From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. Welcome to the 21st-century food wars. In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in...

Land acquisition and involuntary displacement have been the fountainhead of enormous destitution of millions of invisible people since Independence. Generations of those sacrificed for ‘development’ are farmers and farm workers, and many are fragile tribal people and forest gatherers. By coercive displacement and dispossession, governments pauperise its poorest people, and its food-growers, so that the ‘nation’ can prosper and grow. Rage at persisting State injustice of coercive displacement frequently spills onto...

-The Business Standard   Land acquisition for the Posco steel project at Gobindpur and Dhinkia villages may be postponed indefinitely due to stiff resistance from villagers. The district administration’s dilemma on whether or not to resume land acquisition at the trouble-torn villages is compounded by the recent beeline of political leaders, civil right activists and anti-land acquisition proponents to the project site. While Swami Agnivesh and a delegation of the state Congress visited...