Farm labourers and sharecroppers stopped work at the site of a Rs 5,000-crore fertiliser plant in Burdwan’s Panagarh claiming they had not been paid their share of the land compensation and demanding construction jobs. The political links of the Protesters at the 500-acre plot acquired by the government and handed over to the Mumbai-based Matix Fertilisers and Chemicals Ltd last year were not immediately clear. But Bengal industries minister Nirupam Sen,...

Nearly 2,000 Adivasis and activists demanding forest rights in Nandurbar are under arrest since December 14 in various jails in Maharashtra, but their crime was not that they protested in support of their demands. “When we asked for some corrections in the written reply to our demands, the Collector objected and said we were not withdrawing our agitation. Finally our demand that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the SIMI [Students Islamic...

The office of the Punjab Information Commission witnessed a paradox of sorts today. Outside, members of the RTI Activists’ Federation, Punjab, were staging a protest against the Commission for not imposing penalty and stretching cases for years, thereby making justice under the RTI Act a long haul. But inside, a case got adjourned because the counsel for one of the parties was leading the protest outside. After their charter of demands...

The farmer in picture committed suicide 18 months ago An advertisement released by the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Karnataka in its campaign for the coming taluk and zilla elections has put it in a spot. The advertisement, published in some Kannada newspapers on December 19, shows a ‘happy' farmer harvesting sugarcane and another driving a tractor. It claims that the “doors of his fortune opened after the BJP came to...

The Kashmir Himalayan region has been a hotly disputed area for decades, with both India and Pakistan laying claim to it. But some Kashmiris see their homeland not only as an area of conflict, but also as a land of agricultural opportunity. Indian-controlled Kashmir is a predominately agricultural region that produces fruit, grains and vegetables for the Indian market. More than 60 percent of the country's apples are grown there. Khuram Mir...