-Livemint.com NGO Common Cause said in a petition that governments and law enforcement agencies had abused sedition laws to gag dissent, suppress freedom of speech and expression and to muzzle critical voices New Delhi: Common Cause, a non-governmental organization, on Wednesday moved the Supreme Court, alleging misuse and misapplication of sedition laws by successive governments, leading to routine persecution of students, journalists and intellectuals engaged in social activism. Common Cause said in...

-Business Standard Meteorologists said the slump could push the cumulative monsoon into the negative zone for the first time New Delhi: The southwest monsoon, which has had a stupendous run so far in 2016, has entered a weak phase for the first time since it gathered steam in July over most parts of the country. Eastern, northeastern India and parts of central India have been spared from this lull, which might continue...

Rising prices of dal: How to deal with it? The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. In India, however, ordinary citizens are under enormous duress due to the skyrocketing prices of dal/ lentils since the last one year. The website of Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that dal prices varied across places. For example, the...

-Business Standard The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill was passed by Parliament amid intense debate over how best India can conserve its forests * Why were the Congress, the Left and tribal activists, including some RSS-affiliated bodies, against the Bill in its present shape? They wanted that the money not be spent on traditional forest lands without the consent of tribals and other forest dwellers. * Why did they want so? India has at least 400...

-CivilSocietyOnline.com New Delhi: The 100-day Accountability Yatra across Rajasthan led by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) has had an impact. The state government has issued orders to re-verify all one million pensions that had been stopped, including the 688,875 pensions that had been cancelled. From December 2015 to March this year the yatra had travelled to 33 districts in Rajasthan to assess how government schemes were functioNINg, find out people’s grievances...