The Mamata Banerjee government wants the Centre to include in the draft National Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill provisions of the Bengal’s land ceiling law, which caps holdings by industry at 24.88 acres. State cabinet sources also said the government would not accept any special economic zone (SEZ) and ask the Centre make its position clear on such enclaves, which typically require large tracts, in the bill. The recommendations were...

The ever-energetic Jairam Ramesh has unveiled a new land acquisition policy for discussion. He has taken on the difficult task of changing an old law whose implementation has led to a sorry mess in Nandigram, Singur and Noida, to mention only a few of the recent cases that have hit the headlines. India’s policy regime for managing land rights and land transactions is totally dysfunctional. Greedy politicians in state governments have...

MFIs in Andhra Pradesh are paying for the sins of their past. Market for new loans has dried up, banks have turned off their spigots while the AP government is content to sit back and watch. It has been eleven months since the Andhra Pradesh government issued an ordinance—later converted into the Andhra Pradesh Micro-Finance Institutions (Regulation of Money Lending) Act—which, the microfinance industry hoped, would be the magic remedy that...

Central information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi has put forth a compelling argument for placing public-private partnerships (PPPs) under the ambit of the Right to information (RTI) Act in an order passed earlier this week. Though the order pertains to a specific case in Delhi, it will have far reaching implications for the rest of the country. The Central Information Commission (CIC) recognizes PPPs as public bodies that must provide information under the...

IF YOU walked down the streets of Jantar Mantar in New Delhi between 3-5 August, you would see what TV cameras aren’t putting out on primetime news. Thousands of farmers from Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh to Rohtak in Haryana. On protest. Against the systematic grabbing of their land by various state governments across the political spectrum. On one side of the road, on large green carpets, are about 3,000 farmers,...