-Hindustan Times A corrosive culture distances the State from the public and legitimises demands for public ‘discipline’ to achieve policy goals Caught on a now viral video, ordering police to “break the heads” of farmer protesters, Haryana bureaucrat Ayush Sinha achieved notoriety last week. The incident, coupled with the Haryana chief minister (CM)’s condemnation of the “choice of words” while insisting on “strictness” to maintain law and order, speaks volumes for how...

-Hindustan Times The ₹12,000 crore Char Dham road project was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016 to connect Hindu shrines of Gangotri, Yamnotri, Badrinath and Kedarnth through a four lane all-weather road The all-weather Char Dham road in Uttarakhand has witnessed 25 major landslides this rainy season, forcing the administration to close two stretches of roads in Tehri Garwhal for indefinite periods and indicating that “unscientific” road construction was causing...

-Hindustan Times Afghanistan has been driving the dry fruit business in Khari Baoli, which is India’s biggest dry fruit market and home to some of the oldest dry fruit importers in the country. Surjeet Singh, a wholesale dry fruits trader, is watching the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan with great concern. “My business is completely dependent on Afghanistan; almost everything here is imported from there, ” says Singh, pointing to a range of dry...

-Scroll.in The court's comments presage the delimitation of Parliamentary seats based on population due in 2026. Should every citizen’s vote possess equal weightage when it comes to having a voice in government? The answer in homogenous, unitary states – such as those found in Europe – is simple: yes. The question, however, becomes far more intractable when one is dealing with a large federation. And it becomes especially complicated if that federation is...

-The Hindu The urban employment scheme will be on the lines of MGNREGS, to improve livelihood of urban poor. CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government will implement an urban employment scheme on the lines of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) at a cost of ₹100 crore to improve the livelihood of urban poor, Minister for Municipal Administration, Urban and Water Supply K.N. Nehru said in the Assembly on Tuesday. “In the...