-The Hindu Dehradun: More than 500 villagers on Saturday protested against the stone crushers who have been licensed to mine the agriculturally-rich region of Tehri district's Maletha gram sabha. The memorandum given to Chief Minister Harish Rawat, on Saturday, read: "The stone crushers working in the area will [be the cause of dust and health problems which will] result in migration of the population...here most of the people are completely dependent on...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The sarkari babu will have to make every minute count. The Narendra Modi government has ordered that an Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) be implemented in all central government offices. A circular issued to all central government offices in the capital today has also asked employees, of all ranks, to submit their contact details (email ID, residential address, telephone and personal mobile phone numbers) to the department of...

-The Hindustan Times The entire framework for monitoring environmental compliance is being dismantled systematically. This is a process that actually began with the UPA Government, which replaced the feisty environment minister Jairam Ramesh with the more pliant Jayanthi Natarajan. With industry lobbies still crying wolf, she too made way for Veerappa Moily, the petroleum and natural gas minister, without the UPA seeing anything contradictory in someone holding both those responsibilities. In just a month,...

-The Economic Times None of the standard explanations quite explain the rise in food prices India has seen: pronounced since 2006 and alarming after 2010. Drought and poor rains? The country has seen good aggregate rainfall in most of those years. Spike in global prices? Those were high in 2007-08, not now. Fragmented value chains that allow middlemen to grab large margins? The value chain has always been fragmented. Growth has slowed...

-Down to Earth The fracas over India's refusal to meet the deadline on trade facilitation exposes rich nations' double standards NOTHING HAS exposed the double standards at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) than the current uproar over the implementation of two agreements at the global trade policing organisation. One, termed Public Stockholding for Food Security Purposes, protects the food security concerns of millions of the poor and the livelihood of millions of...