The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government on Wednesday introduced the politically crucial land acquisition Bill in the Lok Sabha, less than two months after the ministry of rural development began drafting it. The National Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation & Resettlement Bill, 2011, aims to address rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) by providing safeguards for both landowners and livelihood losers while clearly defining the “public purpose” for which land can be acquired...

Anna Hazare’s fast is over, but the conjuncture of which that fast was an episode is not: Hazare’s own movement, or other similar movements, are bound to recur in the coming months. The question naturally arises: what are these movements all about? And to start with: what was Hazare’s own movement all about? It was CERTainly not about “corruption” in any definable sense. That word meant different things to the...

About 30,000 farmers in Maharashtra are feeling cheated. The soybean seeds they had purchased from the state seed corporation, Mahabeej, failed to germinate this season. About 40,000 hectares (ha) of farms in seven districts have been affected. Mahabeej has 45 per cent share in the soy seed business in the state. The blame game Government officials and the state agriculture department blame the farmers for the crop failure. M T Gondeswar, agriculture...

India is the worst among the six top Asian economies when it comes to the representation of women in the workforce at junior and middle-level positions, according to the Gender Diversity Benchmark for Asia 2011 report. “It performs only slightly better than Japan at senior level positions,” said the report released by Community Business, a non-profit organization focusing on diversity and inclusion in Asia. The report surveyed women at different levels across...

Anna Hazare's campaign may lead to a new Lokpal Bill, but it has legitimised middle-class vigilantism and other kinds of civil society mobilisation. NOW that Anna Hazare has declared victory, it is time to take stock of one of the most powerful recent mobilisations of people in India, focussed on influencing policy or lawmaking processes. The victory, however, is largely symbolic. The original demand of the movement, carefully built around Hazare's...