-Frontline Odisha shows the way in the implementation of the ICDS scheme to ensure that children receive nutrition and care in their earliest years, but the Centre’s moves to slash budgetary allocations could wreak havoc on such programmes. At the Tasarda anganwadi centre in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district, as the auxiliary nurse and midwife (ANM) pulled out the blood pressure (BP) instrument to check a pregnant woman, the children at the anganwadi began...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: As the farm crisis rocks the state assembly, there is no escaping the fact that the despair in Maharashtra's countryside is only deepening. The farmer suicide count in the six-month span from January to June this year stood at 1,300 cases, the state's revenue department figures show. So in just six months this year, the farmer suicide toll has already touched 66% of the 1,981 cases recorded...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Challenging repromulgation of land acquisition ordinance by Narendra Modi government, three Delhi-based NGOs and Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) on Thursday told the Supreme Court that government was trying to "govern the country by ordinance raj" which was not permissible. Appearing before a bench headed by Justice JS Khehar, senior advocate Indira Jaising said that the govt is making mockery of the constitution by bringing ordinances when...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court today asked the Centre to respond to a petition that has challenged the government's decision to re-promulgate the land acquisition ordinance, slamming what it called was a "defiant" act that went against the court's earlier judgments. A bench headed by Justice J.S. Khehar gave the government four weeks to reply after former additional solicitor general Indira Jaising said the court was already seized of the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: NDA-ruled states cannot "wait indefinitely for consensus" on amendments to the Centre's land bill and want to pass their own laws for smooth acquisitions, finance minister Arun Jaitley said today. Some lawyers said while many states have framed amended rules in the past, these were at variance but not in "complete contradiction" to the central land law. Jaitley was speaking after a meeting of the governing council of the...