-The Business Standard Forest Rights Act being reinterpreted to avoid amendment Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is discussing possible ways to do away with the mandatory requirement of securing consent from tribal gram sabhas (village councils) before cutting down their forests for industrial purposes. The deliberations, on among various ministries, are for zeroing in on such a way that the requirement is removed without...

-Down to Earth The true potential of the Fifth Schedule was diluted right at its conception Incontrovertibly, the object of creating the Fifth Schedule was to make a special instrument for the welfare and advancement of the Scheduled Tribes. It was formulated for the implementation of the Directive Principle that the State shall promote with special care the educational and economic interests of ...... the Schedules Tribes, and shall protect them from...

-Al Jazeera The UN claims that its Millennium Development Campaign has reduced poverty globally, an assertion that is far from true. The received wisdom comes to us from all directions: Poverty rates are declining and extreme poverty will soon be eradicated. The World Bank, the governments of wealthy countries, and - most importantly - the United Nations Millennium Campaign all agree on this narrative. Relax, they tell us. The world is getting...

-The Guardian India cannot support an agreement that ignores food security when millions of its people go to bed hungry each night There is a view on global trade negotiations that has been propagated by a spate of commentaries and news analysis over the past few months. It runs broadly as follows: the multilateral trade regime had been limping to a slow death because of the failure of the Doha development round...

-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...