After recognising the main reasons to be hopeful about the new Land Acquisition Bill, this commentary critiques two significant structural problems in the proposed legislation: first, the definition of “public purpose”, especially the “informed consent” provision that has been included; second, the price setting mechanism, especially the possibility of an exponential escalation at the metropolitan edges and the creation of certain bizarre rural-urban boundaries.

There are various stakeholders who are poising major threat to the sustainability of the forest resources. The categories of these stakeholders are the state and its agents, capitalist and private contractors and local communities. The present study focuses on the third types of stakeholders and their contest over the forest resources. The communities who are living in the vicinity of the forest are not homogenous, they are hetrogeneous, and their heterogeneity is reflected through caste background, power, ownership of land and ideology.

Draft land bill proposes higher compensation for land acquisitions, but complaints persist.

A survey by the Indian government in 2002 to determine households below poverty line (BPL) left out many poor families. Nearly a decade later, the Union Ministry of Rural Development (MORD) is trying to set the wrong right. But it is unable to decide on the criteria for identifying poor households. As a consequence, the BPL survey that was to begin in April this year has been rescheduled for June.

The livelihood options of landless households of far western Nepal are wage labor, farming and seasonal migration to India. Food sufficiency is barely enough for 0-3 months a year for most. When food is scarce, they cope by borrowing money, buying food, occasional wager labor as domestic servants, less popular and cheaper or wild food, skipping meals and eating less. These options are embedded with social relation in terms of class, caste and gender and social institutions.

Floating agriculture is a good popular practice of the low-lying areas the south-western parts of Bangladesh where lands remain submerged most of time in a year. Not only to cope during floods, floating agriculture is
also a potential means to increase the food production in the country.

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