-The Telegraph Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has written to the Prime Minister for a rethink on a cabinet committee's recent clearances to two mining projects in Jharkhand's Saranda forests. Ramesh has argued that the projects would harm his ministry's Rs 300-crore development plan for the region, alienate local tribals and weaken the fight to contain the Maoists, a ministry official said. The Prime Minister heads the cabinet committee on infrastructure, which gave...

-The Telegraph The sudden arrest of Amway India's top brass on Monday has focused the spotlight on the crumbling fault lines and the grey areas in the demarcation between some of the world's best-known direct selling companies and the dodgy Ponzi schemes that promise huge returns to gullible investors and have lately grabbed all the sensational headlines in Bengal. William S. Pinckney, managing director of Amway India, and two directors of the...

-The Hindu New York: Dayamani Barla was presented with the first ever Ellen L. Lutz Indigenous Rights Award by Cultural Survival, an indigenous peoples' rights organisation The Big Apple is renowned as the home of investment banks, glitzy fashion shows and other 21st-century tributes to prodigious wealth accumulation. But on Thursday it played host to a powerful symbol of Indian adivasis' struggle against oppression, Jharkhand activist and journalist Dayamani Barla. On a rainy...

-The Hindu Madurai: No end to doubts raised and clarifications provided with respect to the Act even after three years The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009 stipulates that private schools reserve 25 per cent of seats at the entry level for children belonging to ‘disadvantaged groups' and ‘weaker sections'. The Central Act originally defined a ‘child belonging to a disadvantaged group' as one belonging to...

-Frontline Corruption tends to be greater in periods when there is a state-engineered redistribution of wealth in favour of a few at the explicit or implicit expense of the many. Liberalisation is one such period. IT cannot be verified and may not be true. But, the view that the record of graft and corruption during the two-term, nine-year rule of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is the worst in India's post-Independence...