-Down to Earth Can pre-poll sops like giving smart phones with internet connectivity to farmers increase farm income? Last week, thousands of farmers and agricultural workers poured into the National Capital to attract and focus the attention of the Central government to their demands. The Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Rally, organised by farmers’ organization, All India Kisan Sabha, and the All India Agriculture Workers Union, broke all records as far as crowd numbers...

-Frontline.in Four years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of the Namami Gange project, the river remains as dirty as ever. WHILE in Varanasi to file his nomination papers for the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi, then the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial nominee, had declared with his characteristic bravado, “I have not come here on my own. I have been invited by mother Ganga.” He said it was his...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A group of ministers led by Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday deliberated on the recommendations that a panel had submitted last week as part of efforts to check lynchings following a Supreme Court prod to end such "acts of mobocracy". Among the suggestions that the panel, headed by Union home secretary Rajiv Gauba, had come up with was tightening of existing laws and action against India...

-The Indian Express The century-old the law against homosexuality was imposed on pre-independent India in accordance with the Christian principles on which the British kingdom was founded. New Delhi: India was introduced to the law against homosexuality almost 80 years before it became independent. At its zenith, the British Empire as part of its ‘civilising mission’ imposed the criminal law of England, including the anti-sodomy law, on its colonies.  While the...

-TheWire.in Organised by the All India Kisan Sabha, the farmers' and workers' demands range from an upward revision of minimum wages to remunerative prices for peasants. New Delhi: On August 29, Vijoo Krishnan, joint secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), was nervous. He reached the Ramlila Maidan in the evening and found it almost entirely submerged under water due to consistent rainfall and poor drainage mechanisms. “I thought to myself,...