-Mumbai Mirror Modi, with his brilliant communication skills along with the media at his disposal, managed to convince farmers to give him a longer rope A senior farm leader had once told me in a regretful tone: “Whenever farmers are denied their rightful crop insurance, or they are harassed by banks for loan recovery, they come to us. We agitate, protest and resist the system’s bullying of farmers. But the same farmers...

-The Hindu If it’s the government’s case that NSSO figures are suspect, what has it based policy decisions on? Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said last week, “we definitely have a data crisis,” and blamed academics for creating a “false narrative”. Yet, at the heart of the data crisis in India is the Central government, which has been holding back important data. Most recently, it did...

-The Hindu The Act nullified the controversial March 20 apex court judgment diluting the stringent provisions of the Dalit protection law. The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stay the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act of 2018, which nullified the controversial March 20 apex court judgment diluting the stringent provisions of the Dalit protection law. The government had brought in the amendments, saying the Scheduled Castes and...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The National Crime Records Bureau, which tabulates and analyzes crime data in India, is considerably behind schedule in releasing its annual report but is looking to deliver a richer and more varied picture by categorizing offences such as attacks on journalists, RTI activists, hate crimes, lynchings and fake news. It will be for the first time that NCRB's annual report will provide data on crimes that...

Passionate about the deepening of agrarian crisis, quite often journalists and media persons cite figures related to farm suicide (as provided by the National Crime Records Bureau) in order to draw the attention of the readers. They do so in the following ways: * Compare the absolute number of farm suicides (viz. suicide by cultivators + suicide by agricultural labourers) across regions/ states for a particular time point or time period...