-The Indian Express Kavita Desai, project director of the urban community development programme of the municipal corporation, said, “We are following the BPL list from 2000.” As soon as the doors of the goods wagon slid shut at the railway yard in Vadodara, a group of women tiptoed in, armed with brooms, sieves and cloth bags. They gently slipped under the wheels of the train, each staking claim to a spot. Then,...

-Hindustan Times Ranchi: Better known as Jharkhand’s waterman, Simon Oraon had always been more popular among farmers in the district’s Bedo block than the country’s newspaper-reading public. But all that changed on Monday, when the President’s office announced that he would be given the coveted Padma Shri award for his contribution to environment conservation. Oraon, 83, has been waging a war against drought since the day he dropped out of school as...

-AP Transparency noted that in places like Guatemala, Sri Lanka and Ghana, citizen activists have "worked hard to drive out the corrupt." Public-sector corruption is still a major problem around the world but more countries are improving than worsening and the United States and United Kingdom have reached their best rankings ever, an anti-corruption watchdog said Wednesday. Denmark remained at the top of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, a closely watched global barometer,...

-Down to Earth Jharkhand taps its dam reservoirs and ponds to boost fish production as well as livelihood AFFLUENCE IS not a word one would normally associate with Jharkhand’s Jamukhadi village, which falls in one of India’s 250 most backward districts. But almost all the houses in the village have TV sets, computers and motorbikes. “There were only a few pucca (brick) houses in our village till 2000 when the state was...

-The Hindu Even as the student population has become increasingly diverse, the high incidence of suicide among Dalit students points to continuing discrimination, exclusion and humiliation. There is a need to apply our minds in a calm manner to address the problems that Dalit students face in institutions of higher education and find a more durable solution, now that the University of Hyderabad has revoked the suspension of students in the context...