-Hindustan Times BJP received the maximum donations of Rs 705.81 crore from 2,987 corporate donors followed by INC which received Rs 198.16 crore from 167 corporate donors. New Delhi: The BJP received the lion’s share – Rs 705.81 crore – of Rs 956.77 crore that corporate houses donated to five national parties between 2012-13 and 2015-16, a report by a Delhi-based non-profit pushing for poll reforms said on Thursday. The party, which swept...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In one-fourth of nearly two lakh villages, which have been declared open defecation free (ODF), all houses don't have toilets, according to the integrated data that the Centre maintains. Finding this difference, the drinking water and sanitation ministry has asked states to update the data so that there is no mismatch. Villages can become open-defecation free only when each household has an individual latrine. The government...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A group of retired bureaucrats have written an open letter ruing the "rising authoritarianism and majoritarianism" that is choking dissent, and urging public authorities to take "corrective action" to "reclaim and defend the spirit of the Constitution". "Argumentation and discussion about different perspectives - the lifeblood not only of institutions of learning but of democracy itself -are being throttled," the letter says. "Disagreement and dissent are considered seditious...

-The Hindu While sanitation schemes in India date back to the British Raj, Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) is the latest and by far most ambitious iteration. Launched by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the end of 2014, the Rs.9,000-crore scheme aims to achieve an Open Defecation-Free (ODF) India by constructing 12 million rural household toilets across the country before October 2, 2019 — to coincide with Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birthday. But...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...