Full Coverage: Land

29.12.2005 In Dorli village in Wardha, farmers simply put up signs announcing their whole village was for sale. It worked, with the local MP giving them Rs.10 lakh. Eslewhere, despair only deepens. Farm suicides have begun in rich Western Maharashtra, too.

23.12.2005 Some of the proposed changes to Scottish planning law could be a planning disaster for many communities, warns a leading environmental group.

23.12.2005 It was in the year 1997 that the phenomenon of suicides by Indian farmers emerged. Since then it has assumed frightening proportions and till now more than 25,000 farmers have taken their own lives. Only the other day a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly threatened to immolate himself in the house itself and a few days later, the news came that farmers in a particular village near Nagpur were preparing their own funeral pyres to immolate themselves

22.12.2005 The remote tribes of the Andaman Islands - who survived the tsunami intact because on seeing the sea recede, they knew to run to higher ground - are in danger of being wiped out completely by settlers invading their land.

19.12.2005 Millions of poor people have been betrayed by very limited trade deals struck at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Hong Kong, says Christian faith based relief and development agency Tearfund.

16.12.2005 Over 100 federal police evicted the Guarani-Kaiowa of Ñanderú Marangatú, Brazil, from their land this week, although the area was officially recognised as the land of the Indian people in March.

15.12.2005 Mario Tema, a Guatemalan indigenous leader, reminded Paul Wolfowitz and other top officials that they should get the consent of those who live in an area before launching major projects that affect their lives--like the open-pit mine located 10 miles from his community of Sipacapa.

14.12.2005 The government is unlikely to achieve its 7 per cent GDP growth rate in 2005-06 due to a decline in cotton and sugarcane crops and is banking more on increased electricity production and improved performance of the banking sector to achieve the desired results.

09.12.2005 Kalahari Bushman Roy Sesana tells the world, ''My people love their land, and without it we are dying" as he receives one of this year's 'Alternative Nobel Prizes'.
* Sesana's speech in full

08.12.2005 NEW DELHI: Hundreds of indigenous groups from the tribal-dominated States staged a dharna here on Wednesday, demanding "pro-people" changes in the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Rights) Bill, 2005.

06.12.2005 NEW DELHI: Magsaysay award winner Rajendra Singh called for the application of indigenous knowledge in the traditional rainwater harvesting system in India.

01.12.2005 Brazilian descendents of runaway slaves, known as quilombos, are hoping a new law will finally give them the right over their own land.