-Down to Earth The ‘real owner’ of forest land is still the forest department. Such brazen violation of the law betrays a systematic attempt to implement FRA, reducing it to a symbol rather than a tool of empowerment The Dangs, the smallest district in Gujarat, is a thickly forested and tribal-dominated region that has been away from the ‘developmental’ paradigm till today. Some 77.5 per cent of its area is under forest cover,...

-The Telegraph Experiments by Saurashtra University represent a 'classic example' of a study designed to reach a predetermined conclusion A group of Indian scientists has decried a Union government agency’s invocation of experiments by physicists at Gujarat’s Saurashtra University to claim cow dung can shield people from radiation. The experiments purportedly showed that cow-dung cakes partially blocked radiation from radioactive caesium. The Rashtriya Kamadhenu Aayog, a unit under the Union fisheries, animal husbandry...

-Scroll.in Attention came to be fixed on protestors hurling flags on top of the Red Fort, eclipsing scenes of Delhi residents welcoming farmers to the city. When the first wave of tractors triumphantly drove down the national highway north of Delhi around 9 am on January 26, the most conspicuous symbol was the Indian tricolour. It dominated all other flags – the saffron-coloured Nishan Sahib, the flag of the Sikh Khalsa Panth,...

-The Indian Express Since 2016, the share of sexual crimes in the list of crimes for which trial courts are imposing death penalty has been steadily increasing. From 17.6 per cent in 2016, it jumped to 37.27 per cent in 2017, 41.1 per cent in 2018 and 53.39 per cent in 2019. New Delhi: Corresponding to the legislative expansion of death penalty for sexual crimes against women, more than 65 per cent...

-Newslaundry.com Journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta faces arrest for an article on the Adani Group, comedian Munawar Faruqui languishes in jail. The good news we were all waiting for in these bleak times came with India’s sensational win in the cricket test series against Australia in Brisbane on January 19. But even as we celebrated good times for Indian cricket, the bad times for Indian journalism and freedom of speech and expression continued. On...