The Supreme Court on Tuesday urged the government to negotiate compensation with farmers before acquiring land for development purposes because paying a "pittance" caused heart burn. The court told additional solicitor general P P Malhotra to "advise the government to set up a committee to negotiate and fix a settled price for land because at a time when land prices are increasing manifold, the government cannot pay them a pittance"....

The management of food and poverty in India is getting increasingly unreal. On the one hand, the country has a bumper harvest with every likelihood of the grain mountain to be procured adding to the existing mountain of official stocks. Without adequate storage space, a not-so-insignificant part of it will rot and go to waste. On the other hand, the government will not allow wheat exports until it is clear...

-The Business Standard   Only anecdotal evidence has been available so far to back the assertion that there has been a sharp rise in agricultural wages. Now, field data bear out the trend. Collected by the Shimla-based Labour Bureau, these numbers show a roughly 50 per cent cumulative rise in rural labour wages in the past two years. The increase in Andhra Pradesh has been assessed at over 40 per cent...

-Mangalorean.com   Amid some misgivings here about India's acquisition of vast stretches of land, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi Wednesday rejected charges of land grab as "loose talk" and welcomed Indian investment for development. "There is no land grab and there will be no land grab. Indian companies should not be constrained by this loose talk," Zenawi, the longtime leader of Ethiopia, said at a joint press conference with Indian Prime Minister...

The National Advisory Council has proposed a framework for the National Food Security Act. But its potential could be wasted by a flawed approach to the PDS. Two years have passed since the Central government announced that a draft National Food Security Act (NFSA) would be posted on the Food Ministry's website “very soon.” After prolonged deliberations, a detailed framework for this Act has recently been proposed by the National Advisory...