-The Financial Express With 66% of its population under the age of 35, India is home to the largest cohort of young people in the world-825 million. The median age of the country is just 27 years, much below 37 in the US and 46 in Japan. Numbers like these suggest that India has a competitive advantage over China and other Asian countries-a demographic dividend. But favourable demographics do not imply that...

-The Hindu Given industry concerns and the desire to accelerate industrialisation, the government could have reopened the debate on the land act. Instead, it has wholly accepted one perception of the conflict, and sought to undo the compromise embodied in the 2013 Act without a review This article will not go into the question of the propriety of the ordinance route to legislation in this case, but will try to present a...

-The Indian Express Just a few years ago, the World Bank in its World Development Report claimed that migration from rural India to urban centres is "natural" and the same should not be interrupted or prevented through schemes like the MGNREGA. This was a shocking statement to all those who know why there is huge and ever-growing migration to cities, not only of the labour class but also of farmers and small...

-IPS News SUNDARBANS, India- When the gentle clucking grows louder, 50-year-old Sukomal Mandal calls out to his wife, who is busy grinding ingredients for a fish curry. She gets up to thrust leafy green stalks through the netting of a coop and two-dozen shiny hens rush forward for lunch. In the Sundarbans, where the sea is slowly swallowing up the land, Mandal's half-hectare farm is an oasis of prosperity. The elderly couple resides...

The tribal or the Scheduled Tribe communities constitute only 8.6 percent of India's population and yet, they are around 40 percent of those displaced due to ‘development’ projects. In the midst of a raging debate on the new Land Acquisition Ordinance, a new report brings out many such paradoxes of development versus displacement of India’s indigenous or Adivasi people. The report exposes the anomalies of land alienation, displacement and forced...