-IANS Bhubaneswar: The status of "National Heritage Animal" to elephants has done little to save them, and at least 427 jumbos have perished in the last seven years in Odisha. Though the state claims it has taken steps to protect the animal, experts say industrialisation and urbanisation are the main reasons for elephant deaths. Elephants are continuously barging into human habitations, triggering a conflict. At least 23 people and 26 elephants have died...

-The Indian Express Eight years after the Sachar committee report on the condition of Muslims and creation of a Ministry of Minority Affairs, a post-Sachar evaluation committee, headed by former JNU professor Amitabh Kundu, has concluded that though a start has been made in addressing development deficits of the community, government interventions have not quite matched in scale the large numbers of the marginalised. Poverty levels among Muslims, the committee found, remained...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The government could soon undertake extensive changes in its land use and acquisition policies as the PMO puts pressure on the agriculture ministry to implement the recommendations of an eight-year-old report that was prepared by a working group chaired by the then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi. The report had proposed that industries and developers could make use of productive agricultural land for industrialisation and urbanisation by ensuring...

-The Hindu A survey commissioned by the Ministry of Human Resource Development simplistically records poverty and academic disinterest as major reasons for children dropping out of school. A survey commissioned by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, in September shows that out of the estimated 20.41 crore children in the age group of 6-13 in India, an estimated 60.41 lakh (2.97 per cent) are out of school. This proportion of out-of-school children...

-The Guardian Men are setting off to find work in cities, and women are being left holding the sickle - how can we help them? "I can see the strain when I go back to the farms," says Palagummi Sainath. "Women have always done the bulk of work in agriculture, but post-2008, things have changed. There's been a male exodus, and the roles that men were doing in agriculture are now...