-The New Indian Express In another incident, he got information that 13 engineers of Madurai Corporation were being promoted without proper documents. THENI: It’s 5 am on Saturday and A Ramakrishnan is busy packing his bags. He has to travel for long hours to educate a new batch of enthusiasts about the Right To Information (RTI) Act. This routine on Saturdays, over the past 14 years, has taken him across the State. The...

-Down to Earth The Union government's claim about being on track to double farmers' income sounds hollow as it has not even spent the allocated budget for agrarian schemes in three of the past five years  On February 28, 2016 Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to double farmers’ income by 2022-23—his gift to the country in its 75th year of independence. In the six years since then, the Union government has not...

-The Telegraph The Telegraph reports on a riverine community’s determination to save its environs Once upon a time, when my forefathers were looking for land to settle down, they found this barren sandbar and decided to make it a habitable place,” says Nani Roy, 42, a resident of Manachar. Char is the Bengali word for sandbar. Manachar is the sandbar that extends from Durgapur Barrage to Panagarh in Burdwan district. About three...

-The Hindu * What are the Forest Conservation Rules and how will it affect forest dwellers and tribals? What is the government’s position on the updated rules? The story so far: The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sparred earlier this week on the latest version of the Forest Conservation Rules. Congress spokesperson, Jairam Ramesh, alleged that the latest version of the rules, updated last month, allowed forest land to be...

-Scroll.in Days after the town was submerged, social media accounts started posting about ‘flood jihad’. Last month’s deluge in Silchar, in Assam’s Cachar district, was followed by a dangerous rumour. This was no natural flood, the rumour claimed – it was deliberately caused. Several social media accounts suggested it was “flood jihad”, in a not-so-veiled reference to the Muslim community. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma himself repeatedly suggested the flood was no...