-The Hindu     The draft policy on the use of forest land is at odds with sound conservation principles and fails to plug holes in current guidelines that work to the advantage of project promoters The Supreme Court in July 2011 while delivering the Lafarge Judgment laid down guidelines on forest clearance procedures. These were to operate till a new regulatory mechanism was put in place. Two years after the judgment, the Ministry...

-The Hindu     Young offenders above a certain age who commit violent crimes should be prosecuted as adults On August 31, 2013, the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) ordered that the boy who raped Nirbhaya, brutalised her with an iron rod, pulled out her intestines and then cleaned up the bus and made tea would go virtually free by sentencing him to only 28 months in a remand home as eight months of the...

-The Indian Express In Gujarat, growth relies on indebtedness. And relegates development. The Gujarat pattern of development has often been arraigned from the left because of its social deficits. Indeed, the state's social indicators do not match its economic performance. With 23 per cent of its citizens living below the poverty line in 2010, Gujarat does better than the Indian average - 29.8 per cent - but it reduced this proportion by...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: While ministers toy with all kinds of ideas to curb consumption of oil, including bizarre ones such as shutting down petrol pumps at night, it might help if they looked inwards. For, the biggest and most profligate oil consumer in the country is the government itself. Petrol flows like water in the government. Not just ministers and officials of the central and state governments, even PSUs...

-The Indian Express   Rajya Sabha on Wednesday passed the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2013. The proposed law, which will replace the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 that suffers from various shortcomings, including silence on the issue of resettlement and rehabilitation of those displaced, stipulates mandatory consent of at least 70 per cent of landowners for acquiring land for Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects...