-Outlook The oasis UPA is supposed to have brought Pakur is a mirage UPA Divertissement Ad claims refurbished pond in Hiranpur block has promoted communal amity through ‘social and religious events'. Locals say no such events have held. Locals dissatisfied with the siphon irrigation system praised in the ad have damaged it repeatedly In fact, local administration is worried about a law and order situation if it files...

-The Hindu Manoharpur (Jharkhand): Deep inside the Saranda sal forest, Thalkobad lies at the core of what was a CPI (Maoist) "liberated zone" in Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district along the Odisha border. Thalkobad, along with 24 other villages, was reclaimed by the Indian state after a massive military operation - Operation Anaconda-I in August 2011 to destroy the CPI (Maoist) Eastern Regional Bureau and several training camps inside Saranda. The village...

-The Telegraph Ranchi: Among 85,000 children between 6 and 14 with disabilities, about 70,000 have been enrolled in schools, says a report of Jharkhand Education Project Council (JEPC) that finds a mention in Unicef's Global Report on the State of World's Children-2013. The report, which was released at Suchana Bhawan today by the UNICEF in the presence of state authorities, also mentioned that the prevalence of disability was 1.7 per cent -...

-The Economic Times If India is now debating opening the books and operations of political parties to the public, it's because of these six people who pulled strategic levers and applied relentless pressure. Soma Banerjee traces a four-year effort that converted intent to action Balwant Singh Khera, a politician from Hoshiarpur in Punjab, is not a name that will strike a chord in mainstream politics or social discourse today. It might in...

-The Business Standard Chhattisgarh proves no cash transfer or UID is needed to make PDS work Viewed from a ration shop in Surguja in the largely poor tribal north of Chhattisgarh, the arguments for and against the food security Bill seem way off the mark. We had travelled there to see first-hand Chhattisgarh's much-celebrated transformation of its broken, corrupt public distribution system (a recent survey found that wastage of PDS grain dropped...