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What about rehabilitation and resettlement for the displaced landowners?
Along with compensation, resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) is the heart of the new legislation. In the last 60 years, particularly in tribal areas of Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, over three crore tribals have been displaced because of irrigation, power, mining, railway and highway projects but they have not got proper R&R. This added fuel to Maoist propaganda that you are being dispossessed by the government that is heartless and insensitive. One of the reasons for this is that we have lacked legislative framework for R&R and it was left to policy making and policies that was an anaemic-anodyne type of a document. We have put R&R into the body of the Act and have defined the 20-25 different activities needed for the process. Till that starts, the process of land acquisition is not deemed to have been completed.
Industry is saying that the higher costs will be a disincentive.
The cost of land to the proportion of project cost is only about 5 to 6 per cent. Industry is exaggerating the financial cost of increased compensation but I admit that the financial cost of acquisition will go up. At the same time, the social cost of acquisition will come down because the social cost is enormous — large-scale displacement, anger and low rate of compensation, land being acquired for public purpose and being sold at windfall rates, land being acquired and not been utilised, land being acquired for public purpose and sold to private companies, land being acquired and government squatting on that land for 20 years, and much more. We have seen all these things during the last several decades. Firstly, the new Act provides a new deal to a landowner. Secondly, it is sensitive to the anger in tribal communities. Thirdly, going by the Singur experience of West Bengal, for the first time we have included landless and livelihood losers as beneficiaries of compensation because when land is acquired, it is not just the landowners who lose but there are local communities who depend on that land for some occupation or tenant farmers or informal sector. So, they also have been brought within the ambit of compensation.
The other concern is that all this will considerably slow down the process of land acquisition.
This does not speed up the land acquisition process but makes it more transparent. The time line would be anywhere between 36 to 40 months if you go through the processes enumerated in the Act. There are four main components in the Act. There is a consent clause or component under which without 80 per cent written consent of farmers, you cannot apply land for private companies, or 70 per cent for PPP projects. There are components for compensation, R&R and SIA (Social Impact Assessment). There is a timeline for each of the acquisition activities and in the long run it will make land acquisition less contentious. Today, land acquisition is very acrimonious. The idea has been to somehow ensure that land acquisition does not create the type of agitations that we are seeing.
Where does it leave the change of land use rules?
The change of land use is entirely the prerogative of the state government. This Act is for land acquisition. It is not for land purchase, which is still a bilateral transaction between the buyer of the land and the seller. It is not a law for land use. Land purchase will remain a bilateral transaction and land use will continue to remain a prerogative of state and municipal governance.
What are the safeguards against the misuse of provisions?
There are penalties that have been provided in the Act but at every step, the entire process to determine the Social Impact Assessment is a public process and not a private one. We have put everything into the public domain. What is the public purpose, how much land has been acquired, do you actually require that much land, what do you intend to do with it; these questions will be addressed as part of the assessment and will be available in the public domain.
Is there any mechanism in place for the government to make a social impact assessment?
There are lots of institutional changes that will be required once this Act comes into force. Institutional changes at the Central and state levels would be needed. We are drafting the rules and will soon make these public and invite comments. All these questions will be addressed, but yes, the institutional capacity will be a very important factor. The Act is almost five times the size of the old Act. We wanted to put everything into the Act and not put everything into the rules, or leave it to the guidelines. This is how the misuse starts. We incorporated it into the Act and if you want to do anything, have the political courage to get it amended.
Both the Centre and state governments already own plenty of land.
The government is the biggest squatter of land. In the last few decades, Central and state governments have acquired so much land, much beyond what they have been able to use. In my view, if they follow an intelligent policy, you need not acquire more new land. You can give whatever land they are sitting on and not using. This will ease the shortage of land that we have in our country and you are right, we should not blame only private industry for squatting of land.
How would you sum up the Act with regard to what it would do to the entire process?
I believe that it brings in a lot of transparency and institutional integrity into the land acquisition process which was earlier driven entirely by the collector. There is a legal sanctity to compensation and R&R which was not there till now. It is a middle-of-the-path Act and I would be very happy if 20 years from now, this Act does not exist. We should not wait for 119 years for another Act because 20 years from now our land records should be modern, the farmers must have adequate bargaining power and if private industry wants land, it should go and buy it. If the government wants the land, it should buy it. My vision is that all land transactions must be bilateral in nature. But today that is not possible because of land records and fragmentation of landholding. This is a transition period.
The other major programme of your ministry is implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). How has that performed?
The MGNREGA has brought enormous benefits. One in four rural households has got employment under the scheme in the last seven years, community assets have been built and distress migration has come down in many pockets. In fact, Northern Railways officials complained to me that their revenues are down because of decline in migration from Bihar, UP and Odisha to Punjab and Haryana for agriculture. Agricultural wages have gone up. That is very good because agricultural wages is the most important determinant of rural poverty. But overall the implementation is still patchy. In states like Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand, even UP, where the demand should have been the maximum, it has been very poorly implemented. In the federal scheme of things, we provide the money, do the evaluation, monitoring and feedback but we do not get into the implementation as we are not an implementation agency.
Coming to the 2014 general election, what would be the big issues and challenges for the Congress?
We will be going to the 2014 election with a 10-year anti-incumbency factor and it would be a big challenge for us. We will be taking on a very aggressive opponent like Narendra Modi. I think there will be an attempt to give a veneer of governance to the strategy of the BJP, but that is not the way. Communal polarisation would still be their bread and butter. Modi has certainly created a buzz in the chatterati, so we have to be doubly vigorous in our campaign strategy. Moreover, it will not be just a national election, but a cumulative sum of state elections where local and state issues and problems will also come up. Our strategy is going to be a positive one — what we have done and what will be done for the electorate. We will not run a negative campaign and will focus on issues like the Food Security Act, Land Acquisition Act, RTI, MGNREGA and Forests Rights Act. We need to reinforce the message of performance.
How will Rahul Gandhi figure in the scheme of things?
He is the manager of our campaign. He may not be our officially declared prime-ministerial candidate, we don’t need to do so. He is the vice-president of the party. His style is totally different from that of Modi, who believes in ‘I, me, myself’. Rahul Gandhi is not autocratic; he is consensual and not a megalomaniac.
Plastic waste is non-existent in Ladakh.
So far so good, but what happens after Diwali should be of greater concern to us. You will see streets littered with the debris of paper from crackers that deafen us each night. Add to that the wrapping paper carelessly strewn and mounds of rubbish outside homes that simply sweep their trash out for someone else to clear and you have a minor avalanche of trash in the country. Among the many aphorisms that Gandhiji gave us, I think the most important one was: Cleanliness is next to godliness. He alone saw with characteristic prescience what prosperity and the Indian propensity for trash non-disposal would lead to. For many years now, I have stopped visiting temples because rather than worship the beautiful idols of the gods inside, I have been more concerned with keeping my purse safe and my feet clear of the rivers of dirt that flow everywhere. So if Modi means what he says — Pehle shauchalaya, phir devalaya — he has my vote.
We have just returned from a spectacular road trip through Ladakh and the awesome landscape left us as wonder-struck as are all first-time visitors to this part of the country. Yet, what was to me even more impressive was the near-total absence of plastic waste and the lack of the squalor that has become such a terrible add-on to all pleasure trips in our land. Believe it or not, there were no ‘gutka’ sachets, no plastic bags and — most delightful of all — no empty packets of potato chips and Kurkure! I never thought that there still existed in this wondrous land of ours, a place where plastic has not choked Nature. All along the pretty Ladakhi valleys, we were greeted by gurgling streams of clear water, glorious willow and poplar trees lit up like golden candles by the autumn sun and the bluest skies that I have ever seen. Every village was electrified with solar panels. This makes eminent sense as the strong sun and dry climate is ideal for harnessing sunlight almost round the year. The houses are still made in the traditional style with local stone and mud and studded with pretty wooden windows. Rosy-cheeked children and cheerful villagers wave at passers-by and pose for photos with those who want to capture this land and its people.
Once upon a time this is what so much of our Himalayan landscape looked like. Yet, go to Kumaon or Garhwal and you will hardly find a village that has any old houses left. Cement boxes have replaced the beautiful old homesteads made by local craftsmen skilled in dry stone architecture and carpentry. Wood carving was a special art all over the region and rare was the house that did not boast carved window frames and door lintels. Sadly, they are all gone and what is left on broken, abandoned homes has been carted away by antique dealers who sell them for a fortune in the plains.
Even more tragic is the ubiquitous plastic waste. The glistening vessels of brass and steel, the hand-beaten copper pitchers for storing water — all these have new plastic avatars that are not just ugly to behold but probably toxic as well. Just as our natural fibres, such as cotton and jute, were slowly phased out by the wash and wear clothes that are easy to look after, we have slowly accepted these as convenient replacements for the cumbersome and difficult to clean metal pots and pans.
Ironically, all developing nations follow the same trajectory of grief that the developed world has rejected. We were once the pioneers of organic food (by the way, Ladakh has a fantastic record in producing the best organic vegetables and fruit and the size of their produce has to be seen to be believed) but now we are poisoning our insides with chemical fertilisers and pesticides. And who knows better than Punjab the perils of poisoning the land we till? All this sounds like a dirge but thankfully there is some hope. I have just received an invitation from Gene Campaign to attend their celebrations as they mark 20 years of work. It is engaged in preserving all the seeds that were indigenous to India. They work towards educating farmers on the importance of going back to the natural methods of organic farming and claim that the produce is not just more healthy but the harvests are impressive as well.
More power to ventures to save the planet from untreated sewage and chemical waste that our generation has unleashed.
A case could be made for as many as five teams for preseason favorite to win the Big Eight Conference.
Chad, Pat and Kyle preview semistate football, promote the Courier & Press basketball section coming this Sunday and (16:56) spend time talking about how the UE and USI men's basketball teams are looking.
Princeton returns the most of anyone. But Jasper also has experience back and Washington is almost always a contender under Hall of Fame coach Gene Miiller. Meanwhile, Mount Carmel is coming off a semistate trip and Vincennes Lincoln should be improved.
It’s normally coachspeak to say every game will be a dog fight. But this year it’s likely to ring true.
“It’s a bigger mystery this year than I can ever remember it being,” Jasper coach John Goebel said. “There are no Zellers or Division-I prospect that colleges are looking at. It really is up for grabs. I don’t think there’s a team in our conference that can’t surprise teams and win it."
Jasper is cautiously optimistic entering the new season.
The Wildcats graduated their leading scorer, but welcome back four players who logged solid minutes and should have better balance offensively. Goebel said 6-3 senior Justin Persohn, the school’s quarterback during football season, will have the most expectations placed on him as the top returning scorer.
The mystery for Goebel and Jasper will continue right into the state tournament.
The Wildcats move up to Class 4A for at least the next two seasons due to enrollment. Goebel said they had been flirting with this possibility in the previous two reclassifications by the IHSAA. Now, Jasper will be the smallest school in the field when it buses down to Evansville to begin the postseason.
Outlook: Haywood’s group is primed to make the next step forward with the return of three double-digit scorers. They have experience, height and solid inside-out balance. The Tigers should challenge for a Big Eight title and perhaps capture it with a breakout season from 6-9 junior Matt Dove.
Outlook: Bumped up to 4A this season, Jasper returns a decent amount from last year but will be without 1,000-point scorer Tyler Nottingham. The Wildcats are always competitive under Goebel.
Outlook: Much is unknown about the Hatchets, outright winners of the Big Eight last year. Miiller returns just three letterwinners and is relying on his younger players to step up.
Outlook: The Aces’ run to semistate last year was headlined by two all-conference players who are no longer on the roster in Justin Carpenter (Southeast Missouri State) and Jackson Marcotte (knee injury). It’ll be a different look, though Buss believes they have the talent to compete in the Big Eight and beyond.
Outlook: There were some growing pains in Thompson’s debut season in Vincennes but the Alices return several players back.
Outlook: Schoonover inherits a program that hasn’t recorded a winning season since 2011. Fortunately, he has some talent to work with as well as four starters returning. Perhaps the team responds better to a new voice.
Outlook: It figures to be a rebuilding year for Hostetter and Mount Vernon, who graduated seven players from another seven-win team.
Kimberly Spears, as well as officers Ngoc Phan, Britney Patillo, Hannah Blaine, and Randi Wallace attended this event. Students competed in Students Taking Action with Recognition (STAR) Events, Family and Consumer Science Assessments (FCSA), Leadership Tracks, and more. Randi Wallace received a silver medal for the FCSA “Job Interview”. Hannah Blaine received a gold medal for the FCSA “Step One” and was recognized for completing all five Power of One Units. Ngoc Phan and Britney Patillo placed 6th in the STAR Event “Sports Nutrition” and are eligible to advance to the state competition.
What’s one way to get everyone to stop talking about your naked photo shoot? Post cute pics of your kid! Kim Kardashian took her daughter, North West, on a trip to the zoo, and of course there’s photos documenting all of it.
Kim was joined by North’s “aunties” Lorraine Schwartz, the jewelry designer who made Kim’s engagement ring, and her sister, Ofira Sandberg, who has her own jewelry company, too.
North's real "aunties" weren't able to make the zoo trip, but they were there in spirit—Kim wrote that Khloe picked out this outfit! "When auntie Koko dresses Nori..." she wrote.
During the same trip, North got to taste her very first hot chocolate!."#Auntiesspoilingher," Kim wrote of North's first encounter with the hot drink. Hope it didn't burn her little tongue!
Clearly North enjoyed her zoo trip. “My little lady loves animals so much!” Kim said of her little girl. Perhaps North has had practice on the family’s stuffed giraffe, Henry!
What do you think of Kim’s pics from the zoo? Tweet us @OKMagazine.
Chelsea Houska & Cole DeBoer's House Was Broken Into!
In a tight race for Best Picture, The Shape of Water came home with Best Picture and Guillermo del Toro won Best Director. But the movie didn’t sweep all the categories it was nominated for. Get Out writer Jordan Peele won Best Original Screenplay, and Dunkirk took home a trio of technical awards. Get the full list of 2018 Oscars winners below.
Commentary: While it would have been great for Get Out to win this award, The Shape of Water couldn’t be more deserving. This is a beautiful movie about love, acceptance and passion in many forms.
Commentary: This was Frances McDormand’s prize to lose, but she won it like all the other awards she did this year.
Commentary: Was there any way that Gary Oldman wasn’t going to win this? He was incredible, so of course he won.
Commentary: Guillermo del Toro worked wonders with a small budget. It’s a beautiful movie, and it makes you shocked that a movie about a woman falling in love with a fish man made it to this point. That’s magical.
Commentary: Oh boy, could this mean that Get Out is going to get Best Picture? This is a big deal and a deserved win.
Commentary: James Ivory wrote a beautiful story of love found and lost just as easily, and while every other script was just as deserving, it’s hard to argue with the fact that this was the best. Sorry, Aaron Sorkin.
Commentary: Another predicted win confirmed after the long road Allison Janney had winning every other conceivable award for Best Supporting Actress. She’s had an award like this coming for a long time.
Commentary: This was expected since Sam Rockwell has been sweeping this award all over the place, and it’s a deserving win for one of the best performances in his career.
Commentary: The performance of “This Is Me” was incredible, but the song from Coco is just beautiful on another level.
Commentary: It would have been amazing if Jonny Greenwood won for Phantom Thread, but the score for The Shape of Water s absolutely stunning.
Commentary: Finally! Roger Deakins gets the award he’s deserved for years! And it likely won’t be his last.
Commentary: Another huge technical win for Dunkirk, which likely means it won’t be taking home any of the bigger awards. But we’ll see how it plays out.
Commentary: This was the favorite foreign film to win, and many people thought it should have been a Best Picture nomination.
Commentary: It was a weak year for animated fare, so of course Pixar had to take it this year with this wonderful film.
Commentary: Creating the realistic world of futuristic Los Angeles was no easy feat, but making it look gorgeous in a way that is distinct from the original is even more impressive. Incredible work all around. It’s a shame that War for the Planet of the Apes didn’t win this year though.
Commentary: The fact that this movie looks like it cost way more than it actually cost, the production design deserved this Oscar through and through. The movie is stunning, and it’s thanks to this team’s collaboration with Guillermo del Toro.
Commentary: The sheer scale of this movie is enough of a reason for this film to get Best Sound Mixing. But besides that, the work done to bring together all of the sounds, music and more to make World War II echo in our ears was outstanding. Again, Baby Driver would have been a great winner too.
Commentary: Considering the wall of sound needed to make this movie feel so realistic and booming, this win absolutely makes sense. But seeing Baby Driver get this award would have been great too.
Commentary: I’ve yet to see Icarus, but this movie will be on my list to watch immediately now. It was the favorite to win, so this was not a surprise.
Commentary: The wonderful fashions of Reynolds Woodcock absolutely deserved this award for the stunning dresses and much more on screen in Paul Thomas Anderson’s gorgeous film.
Commentary: This was another foregone conclusion. The make-up that turned Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill was astounding and so lifelike.
Commentary: Another predicated win. This is a wonderful, unconventional animated movie that even non-sports fans can enjoy. Also, Kobe Bryant has an Oscar? Crazy!
Commentary: This is one I haven’t seen, but it sounds like a heartwarming film, and it was lovely that the filmmaker used sign language during her speech.
Commentary: This was the first real surprise of the night. Having not seen any of the documentary shorts, all I can say is well done.
Though Michael Licona became a Christian at a young age, he experienced strong doubts while working on a master’s degree in religious studies at Liberty University. That led him to explore the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus in his PhD work, and to engage in public debates with leading skeptics and atheists. Driven by a desire to follow the evidence wherever it led, Licona understood that journey might lead him away from Christianity.
In 2010, Licona released his book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, which showed that the evidence for the historical resurrection of Jesus is much stronger than any competing explanations, such as the idea that Jesus’ body was stolen by his followers or by his enemies, or that the disciples simply experienced hallucinations of the resurrected Jesus.
Licona, formerly apologetics coordinator at the North American Missions Board, is now teaching at Houston Baptist University and has founded RisenJesus.com. He recently released a new book, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?: What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography (Oxford University Press).
What was your upbringing like? Did you grow up as a Christian?
My parents were Catholic and split up when I was five. My mom remarried and we started attending a Presbyterian church. When I was very young, I was obsessed with getting to heaven. I was always asking, “How do I get to heaven, Mom?” And she said, “You just have to do more good than bad.” So, I was constantly thinking, Where am I on that scale?
May 2017, Vol. 61, No. 4, "Why Don't the Gospel Writers Tell the Same Story?"
President Trump on Wednesday grounded Boeing 737 Max 8 operation in the U.S.
-A Boeing 737 Max 8 operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashes outside Addis Ababa, killing all 157 of its passengers and crew shortly after takeoff.
-The Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 accident raises more questions about the safety of the Boeing plane. A similar incident occurred five months ago, when Lion Air 610 plunged into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff. An investigation in November found the plane safe to fly.
-Ethiopian Airlines grounds all of its 737 Max 8 planes. Cayman Airways said it would suspend use of the Boeing jet on Monday.
-Boeing extends its condolences and says it is sending a team to provide technical assistance under the direction of the Ethiopia Accident Investigation Bureau and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. More than 350 of the $120-million-per-plane 737 Max 8s have been delivered since 2017, and about 5,000 more have been ordered, according to The New York Times.
-Boeing is down 11.5% in premarket trading, putting it on track for its "worst day since 9/11."
-The Civil Aviation Administration of China orders its airlines to cease operating all 737 Max 8s in their fleets, citing the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crashes. Indonesia follows China’s example nine hours later, telling airlines to ground the Boeing aircraft. Chinese and Indonesian airlines are two of the biggest users of the 737 Max, according to The New York Times.
-Search crews recover Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302’s "black box."
-Despite the crashes, carriers including American and Southwest airlines say they will continue to operate the Max 8. Delta and United don’t operate Max 8 planes. However, United said it has 14 Max 9s in its fleet. Overseas airlines including India’s SpiceJet, South Korea’s Eastar Jet, New Zealand’s Fiji Airways, Singapore’s SilkAir, and South Africa’s ComAir say they will continue to operate the Max 8.
-The U.N. says that at least 22 of its staffers who were bound for the U.N. Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya died during the crash.
-The U.S. FAA declares the 737 MAX, both versions 8 and 9, to be airworthy.
-The E.U. Aviation Safety Agency grounds the jet.
-President Donald Trump tweets that "airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly."
-Trump speaks with Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg. News outlets point out ties between the Trump administration and the company.
-The FAA says it stands by its assessment and continues its probe. No evidence gathered by the agency or evidence provided to it warrants grounding the aircraft, it says.
-Boeing says it will tweak the software change in the 737 Max’s flight-control system, according to The Wall Street Journal. Plans to implement the change preceded the Ethiopian Airlines crash. Boeing also reaffirms its confidence in the 737 Max family.