The Singareni Collieries Company Limited proposed to mechanise the new underground mines coming up soon while introducing machines in the existing ones.

Land development, as wind turbine leader Suzlon is discovering in Maharashtra, is confronted with a peculiar problem. Once developed, land

Agrarian crises leading to suicides by farmers, large-scale evictions in rural and urban areas, state-sponsored violence and social discrimination are some of the issues highlighted in the "shadow reports' submitted to the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) committee that will review India's record 17 years after its ratification by the country.

Global steel major ArcelorMittal, who is proposing to set up a 12 million tonne greenfield steel plant at Patna tehsil in Keonjhar district of Orissa, plans to spend about $300 million (about Rs 1,200 crore) on rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R). Only a couple of weeks ago, the company had announced an identical R&R packages for its project in Jharkhand, where it intends to set up an equal-capacity steel plant.

When the Delhi Government announced a three-fold increase in its land acquisition rates earlier this year, from nearly Rs.25 lakh per acre to Rs.75.26 lakh per acre, a huge wave of cheer swept landowners in Delhi's villages. However, as the details of the much trumpeted scheme became known, the happiness turned to despondency in six villages where almost 1,200 acres of land has been acquired but whose owners would still not be able to get the enhanced compensation.

Even as the Kancheepuram district administration expects to complete land acquisition in a month to allow the airport expansion project to start in June, for the residents in the affected areas, many questions remain unanswered.

In a political message to West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee that the party is supreme and his industrialization drive needs to be reworked, he was made to announce an industrial policy that for a change emphasizes on land acquisition with caution, proper compensation and rehabilitation.