-Economic and Political Weekly   The stage is all set for the resumption of iron ore mining in Goa after it was suspended in the state in 2012, to curb its indiscriminate and illegal mining. The Goa government's decision to renew the mining leases comes at a time when the economics of iron ore mining have changed and environmental concerns have gained more prominence. Pamela D'Mello (dmello.pamela@gmail.com) is a Goa-based journalist. The state government...

-Economic and Political Weekly   Amendments proposed by the previous Congress-led union government to the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 had the potential of improving upon this progressive legislation. Unfortunately, with its successor pursuing different priorities, the possibility of the amendments being passed remains rather low. Kamal Nayan Choubey (kamalnayanchoubey@gmail.com) is with the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. A bill for an amendment to the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas)...

-The Hindu The report of the High-Level Committee for reviewing environmental laws has a misplaced focus on speedy project clearances and wrongly attributes their delays to environmental laws The report of the High-Level Committee (HLC) on a review of environmental laws may no longer be in the news, but its potential for impacting environmental governance in the country has not diminished. That potential will become real soon enough. A note of caution...

-IPS News CHINTOOR, India- Laxman, a 10-year-old Koya tribal boy, looks admiringly at a fenced-in vegetable patch behind his home in southern India's Andhra Pradesh state. Velvety-green and laden with vegetables, the half-acre patch is where Laxman's family gets their daily quota of nutritious food. But one day soon it will disappear under several feet of water, thanks to the Polavaram multipurpose project - a 45-metre-high, 2.32-km-long mega dam currently under construction...

-Oxfam Blog Vanita Suneja, Oxfam India's Economic Justice Lead, argues that India can't progress until it tackles rural poverty. This entry was posted on 3 February 2015. More than 800 million of India's 1.25 billion people live in the countryside. One quarter of rural India's population is below the official poverty line - 216 million people. A search for economic justice for a population of this magnitude is never going to be...