-The Hindu The latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau show that it is time to change our understanding of felony and its registration by the police With every passing year of writing on the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s crime data, it has become increasingly clear that what I am forced to do is essentially compare apples and oranges, and then make a normative call based on that comparison. This...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre has decided to stop reimbursing states for the unsubsidised cooking gas cylinders they are forced to buy for the school midday meal scheme. A food security adviser expressed the fear that the Centre's decision may force states to fall back on firewood. But a former member of the National Advisory Council backed the decision, saying states should make use of the additional money they were getting...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Monday came down heavily on the Delhi government for pollution in the Capital and underreporting the number of trucks that enter Delhi. “The Centre says old diesel vehicles do not cause pollution, the Delhi government says vehicles from outside do not cause pollution either. Something must be wrong somewhere,” the bench stated after the Delhi government said that only 41 of 759...

-Hindustan Times When right to information activist Guru Prasad Shukla was beaten to death by fellow villagers last month, he became the 39th person to lay down his life for exercising the transparency law in its first decade. Another 275 people have reportedly been assaulted or harassed for invoking the law to raise uncomfortable questions before those in power. The 50-year-old Shukla had sought information about development work in his village and...

-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...