-Business Standard Move comes despite RSS affiliated organisation opposing such regulations Maharashtra government has finalised regulations that will allow it to wrest back control from tribals over the lucrative forest trade in goods such as bamboo and tendu leaves worth thousands of crores annually. This also involves management of potentially 80% of community forestlands in the state after the Union Tribal Affairs ministry’s volte-face on interpreting the Forest Rights Act. The Forest Rights Act...

-The Hindu The ruling party is doing its best to establish that being critical of its government is tantamount to being anti-national. It is not just the inconvenient person or collective being intimidated; the Constitution is under attack. “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” — George Orwell The controlled voice of Ravish Kumar on a blackened screen and his stark report on NDTV India on February 19...

In the age of social media, various sections of the Indian polity and civil society have reacted publicly in diverse voices, following the presentation of the Union Budget 2016-17 by Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley. An assessment of the Union Budget 2016-17 has been done in the following paragraphs by the Inclusive Media for Change team, based on a number of media reports, Government documents (including the Budget documents), and reports...

-Down to Earth The country’s performance in terms of public participation and budget oversight by the legislature was rated “weak” in the survey As Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley gears up to present the Union Budget 2016-17 (April-March), it is worth noting that an international survey of budgets of over a 100 countries points out that India provides “limited” budget information in the public domain. The Open Budget Survey 2015, released by the...

-The Hindu Business Line The scheme has made life easier for the people of this Andhra Pradesh village, one of the first in the state to have 100 per cent financial inclusion. But the local experience also throws up a few questions relevant nationally, reports Gunturi Naga Sridhar Fourty-year-old M Ravamma, from Polavaram, a village in the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, had a nightmarish experience two months ago. Her husband complained...