-PTI Farmers should not be forced to vacate their land for development projects, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said, advocating adequate compensation for them. "Land acquisition should be done with the consent of the farmers by giving them adequate compensation and if required after adjusting the affected family in job," Yadav said in a conclave in Lucknow on Friday. He said the state government is planning to construct a road to connect...

-The Hindu The debate over the cartoons used in NCERT textbooks as aids to learning have thrown up a range of issues. The discussion has crystallised around a set of oppositions: motivated political correctness of our elected representatives vs. the necessity of preemptory parliamentary intervention on educational material appropriate for schools; institutional autonomy vs. political responsibility of a state presiding over a diverse and fraught society; the hubris of ‘experts’ vs....

-The Telegraph Shillong: Two teams of National Disaster Response Force personnel were rushed to Meghalaya’s South Garo Hills district today to help rescue possible survivors among the 15 labourers trapped inside a coal mine since last week. The Guwahati-based personnel reached Nengkol in the Rongsa Awe area of Nangalbibra region — from where it is 10km to the coal mines — late this evening. Baghmara, the district headquarters, is around 480km from...

-The Telegraph The Centre is planning to hold a comprehensive workshop for tribal women in Jharkhand to make them more alert to the menace of human trafficking, the decision mirroring its concern over the rise in number of such victims from the state. Krishna Tirath, Union minister of women and child development who met Jharkhand Women’s Commission member Vasavi Kiro in Delhi today, said the workshop would be held sometime in August-September...

-The Hindu School staff members offended by government circular asking them to avoid wearing indecent clothes A recent circular issued by the school education department, which urges teachers to be dressed in a “decent manner”, has evoked strong responses from teachers, who are offended by what they see as the officiousness of the message. The circular dated June 29, in essence, tells teachers: Please avoid wearing indecent clothes; it is important that you...