-The Hindu MGNREGA records manipulated; workers’ wages siphoned off from accounts Rankikalan (Jharkhand): At noon on Tuesday last, a dozen men gathered on the banks of the Auranga near Rankikalan village in Latehar district. As they performed the dashmirites, the wailing from the huts in the village continued. Bhuiatoli village had lost 23 men, women and children when the truck in which they were returning to the village after working on landlords’...

-The Indian Express Twenty-two Naxal-affected districts will now be able to build critical public infrastructure even in forestland, the Ministry of Environment and Forests has decided. Following demands raised by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Planning Commission, the MoEF has decided to relax forest conservation rules to allow diversion of forestland for creation of essential infrastructure in 22 districts affected by Left Wing Extremism. Departments will be able to build...

-The Hindu Relentless counter-insurgency operations taken up in all left-wing Extremism-affected States seemed to have had the desired impact, as Maoist violence registered a record low in 2012. The downward trend in violence in the last six-year period, could indicate the success of the security forces in pushing the Maoist revolution into a strategic equilibrium stage. Another possibility could be an unannounced tactical retreat from some areas by Maoists themselves to protect...

-The Economic Times Martha C Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She has written extensively about religious minorities and their predicament across the world. While her latest book, The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age, focuses on the treatment of religious minorities, especially Muslims, in the western world, she has written about the meticulous targeting...

-The Economic Times The government will roll out a United Nations-assisted livelihood security programme in 10 Naxal-infested districts in a bid to tackle the growing influence of Maoist rebels. The rural development ministry, which has been spearheading the developmental approach to this Left-wing menace, has in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme worked out a five-year plan to make markets work for the poor, ensure that state governments are more responsive...