-The Hindustan Times The skyrocketing prices of onions, a key ingredient used in making dishes ranging from curries to biryanis, reflects India’s inability to insulate staples from weather-induced supply disturbances. On Thursday onions traded at Rs 4,900 a quintal (or Rs 49 a kg) at Lasalgaon in Maharashtra, India’s largest wholesale market for the crop. Inadequate supplies have pushed up prices sharply over the last few weeks. Already, retail onion prices have...

-Livemint.com BJP’s U-turn on the proposed land Act reflects a re-balancing of deeper political forces that are at work in India’s political economy The recent U-turn by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government on the proposed amendment to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (henceforth the land Act), can be viewed narrowly as a Congress victory in the ongoing tit-for-tat game that is short-changing...

-The Hindu Legal researcher Usha Ramanathan speaks about the the modified draft Bill which continues to raise several critical concerns relating to privacy, ethical usage of DNA samples and DNA database. This week, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) uploaded a slightly modified draft of the Human DNA Profiling Bill on its website, opening up the controversial Bill, now tabled in Parliament, for public scrutiny. Legal researcher Usha Ramanathan, a member of the Committee...

-The Hindu Business Line The numbers may look good but the consumer’s monthly budget hasn’t eased up. Here are four reasons why the common man has no respite from inflation It’s official! Inflation is down. The wholesale price inflation has been in negative territory for the last eight months. CPI, the consumer price-based inflation, has also dropped, from 8-8.5 per cent in the beginning of 2014 to sub-5 per cent now. Inflation...

-The Hindu Bench agrees with Centre that freezing Aadhaar registration at this point will do no good Leaving the decision to sign up for Aadhaar entirely to citizens, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that “balance of interest” was better served if obtaining the unique identity number was made optional and not mandatory. Hearing criticism that even newborn babies were made to register for Aadhaar, a three-judge Bench led by Justice J. Chelameswar,...