Development has a multiplier effect in terms of employm-ent, secondary activity and revenue to state, while delay entails loss for everybody. Tolstoy’s famous question, “How much land does a man require?” was answered when the Count who had ruthlessly exploited his serfs was buried in a grave measuring 7x4x4 feet. And that, Tolstoy concluded, was all the land a man requires. Is corporate and infrastructural greed in India today destroying the small,...

Who cares for a paltry Rs 100 per day clean pay from the government. If you are dealing in coal, a little more black in your pockets couldn't hurt. Job schemes under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in Ramgarh district are floundering as labourers prefer to ferry coal for illegal traders, fetching them at least four times more wages. "I have no interest in job schemes initiated...

Governments can acquire land for “public purpose” while making sure that the displaced are compensated, relocated and rehabilitated. THE violent conflict over land acquisition in Uttar Pradesh and the persisting resistance to land acquisition for the Posco project in Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa are merely recent instances that exemplify the growing stand-off between the Indian state and its people centred on land. On the one side are governments (both Central...

The farmers' struggle against land acquisition only shows that from passive forms of protest they have turned to active forms of resistance. THE recent agitation by farmers in Uttar Pradesh against cropland acquisition for non-agricultural purposes is only the latest in a long series of protests by farmers and rural communities, which started a decade ago in different parts of the country and which gathered momentum over the past five...

Jairam Ramesh's order of May 6 rescinding his earlier stop-work notice with regard to the Maheshwar dam surprises many. ON May 6, Jairam Ramesh, the Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests, made a confession while responding to a questioner at a public meeting. He said he had been under “pressure” to overlook environmental violations while clearing certain projects. “Regularisation of illegality is a peculiar Indian characteristic. First you...