-The Hindu The Maldharis of Kutch are well adapted to a culture of scarcity. But older coping mechanisms have died away Do you remember how the monsoon began last year, ben?” asked Haji bhai of Hodka village in the heart of the Banni grasslands in the Rann of Kutch. “The thunder, the way the ground swelled from hours of rain and tiny grasses appeared the very next day. Do you remember, we...

-The Telegraph Shelters that can function as a a school or a vegetable market Kharagpur: Two IIT Kharagpur professors who have designed the shelters that saved thousands of lives after Cyclone Fani hit Odisha last Friday said the lessons of the 1999 supercyclone were the trigger behind their project. Sriman Kumar Bhattacharyya, professor of civil engineering department at the institute, and Gopal Chandra Mitra, a visiting professor at the department, took one-and-a-half years...

-DNAIndia.com NEW DELHI: In an order that is likely to have wider ramifications, the central information commission has directed the CBI to disclose details of a case it had investigated. Dismissing the agency’s contention of being exempt from RTI requests under section 24 of the RTI Act, the CIC said the CBI had “grossly erred” in invoking exemption under sections of the RTI Act. It directed that the information be shared with...

-The Hindu No party admits to offering bribes to voters, even though it is common knowledge that they all do. In the just-concluded elections to 38 Lok Sabha constituencies and 18 Assembly seats in Tamil Nadu, cash seizures alone added up to around ?215 crore, almost 10 times the haul during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. While some activists blame the ‘freebie culture’ in the State, others call for an overhaul...

-Livemint.com * Out of the 1.8 million people living in the Banswara district in 3.6 lakh households, 78% are tribals * With a 46.1% literacy rate, 91.3% of households earn less than ?5,000 per month Banswara, Rajasthan: WheN Ramchandar, 52, wakes up in his thatched house every morning in the hilly tribal village of Katumbi in Rajasthan's Banswara district, his first preoccupation is to fetch water from the nearest village at a distance...