Land acquisition and involuntary displacement have been the fountainhead of enormous destitution of millions of invisible people since Independence. Generations of those sacrificed for ‘development’ are farmers and farm workers, and many are FRAgile tribal people and forest gatherers. By coercive displacement and dispossession, governments pauperise its poorest people, and its food-growers, so that the ‘nation’ can prosper and grow. Rage at persisting State injustice of coercive displacement frequently spills onto...
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Broad consensus on draft Lokpal Bill: Kapil Sibal
-IANS Terming the meeting between the government and civil society representatives on the proposed Lokpal Bill a "major breakthrough", human resource development minister Kapil Sibal on Monday said there has been a "broad consensus" between the two sides. "We had a meeting of three hours, between 11 am to 2 pm and had full-fledged discussions on a range of issues. There was a FRAnk exchange of views and there has been...
More »Undermining people’s power - A story of five years by Nikhil Dey
More than five years have passed since the world’s largest employment programme was launched in India. The scale of employment generated was not the only reason that this is a path breaking legislation. The MGNREGA is the first national law to establish rights in the development sector. It is demand based, and not constrained by arbitrary and restrictive selections like the Below Poverty Line (BPL) list. Any person living in a...
More »State of land acquisition by Prasad Nichenametla
The West Bengal assembly on Tuesday passed a bill to return to some of the original owners their land in Singur, which had been acquired by the previous Left Front government for the Nano project. In doing so, chief minister Mamata Banerjee kept her pre-poll promise to the electorate, which gave her Trinamool Congress, a resounding majority in the elections. The Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Bill cites “non-commissioning of the...
More »RTI task force seeks protection for whistleblowers
-PTI A special task force set up by the government to ensure effective implementation of RTI has sought protection for whistleblowers. It has asked the government to FRAme laws and devise mechanism to protect RTI activists across the country. "A meeting will be held later this month with the representative of the Ministry of Home Affairs," an official of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the nodal agency for...
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