-The Times of India A parliamentary panel has recommended that government keep away from Land purchase for private parties, contrary to the provision made in the pending Land acquisition bill, striking at the heart of the Centre's plan to facilitate acquisition for industry and townships with better compensation. The standing committee's blanket bar on acquisition for private bodies, including Public Private Partnership for projects defined as public purpose, strikes down the clause...

-The Hindustan Times The parliamentary standing committee on rural development is slated to submit on Thursday its report on the much-awaited Land acquisition bill — with suggestions for tough norms that would make it very difficult to acquire Land for industry. The committee, it is understood, has suggested that ‘public purpose’ be clearly defined to prevent profit-making industries from taking advantage of the law under the guise of producing public goods...

The colonial government took a liberal view of the merciless lampooning that it received at the hands of cartoonists in the Indian press A cartoon is a written expression of the comic impulse, and the cartoonist is an artisan of nib and brush who puts down complex processes of reason and argument in drawings and pictures. His impact is that readers sit up, smile, frown, or simply laugh. In short, cartoons...

Parliament is now a body of fragile selves. They won’t draw a sword for liberty Is the controversy over the Ambedkar cartoon in the NCERT textbook a sign of a deeper intellectual and cultural malaise? The plot line is eerily familiar. One set of politicians raises, in this case falsely, the apprehension that a cartoon is offensive. There is a high-pitched debate. Members of an offended community accuse others of insensitivity...

SANGLI/ SATARA: Open trailers packed with families and cattle have become a common sight along Maharashtra's highways - a telling sign of the distress the drought in 15 districts of the state has brought with it. Truckloads of villagers are migrating from the hinterLand to cities like Mumbai, Pune and Kolhapur in desperate search for livelihood. While many officials deny the drought-driven migration, the absence of male heads in rural homes...