-Newsclick.in In the lack of specific guidelines and a central monitoring mechanism, the process to review forest rights claims has varied across states. With the Modi government abdicating its responsibility of playing a coordinating role in reviewing settlements of claims on forest land, large number of rejections, in many instances above 50%, are being reported from various states. The Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) is yet to set any specific guidelines...

-The Telegraph The court was hearing a joint PIL filed by Anjali Bharadwaj, Col Lokesh Batra and Amrita Johri complaining about the openings resulting in a massive backlog of cases The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted four weeks to the Centre and states to come out with details of vacancies of information commissioners amid complaints that governments across the country are seeking to dilute the transparency law by the keeping the posts...

-NDTV.com Central Teams Rushed To 6 States Reporting Increased COVID-19 Cases New Delhi: The central government has sent six high-level multi-disciplinary public health teams to six states reporting a high number of COVID-19 cases. The teams will assist the states of  Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Manipur in COVID-19 control and containment measures, the Health Ministry said on Friday. These teams will gather a first-hand understanding of the challenges and issues...

--Review of Agrarian Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, JANUARY-JUNE, 2021 Abstract: In recent years in India, minimum support price (MSP) and government procurement, especially of paddy and wheat, have been discussed widely, but these discussions have often drawn on evidence that is dated and incomplete. Consequently, such discussions have clouded the facts, resulting in a large number of factoids. According to these popular misconceptions, very few farmers (6 per cent only) benefit...

-The Hindu We need to address inequality, and social and gender discrimination, says Poonam Muttreja, Population Foundation of India In the recent past, States like Uttar Pradesh and Assam, and and Union Territories like Lakshadweep, have proposed to implement a two-child norm as a pre-condition for getting government jobs or to get nominated or elected to Panchayat elections. What has been the impact of such policies so far? Jagriti Chandra interviewed executive...