-Livemint.com To stabilize crop prices and make them remunerative, the Swaminathan Commission proposed significant improvements in the implementation of MSPs Across the country, farmers are furious—and rightfully so. Four years ago, they helped bring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, believing Narendra Modi’s claims that they would no longer suffer official neglect. But since then, conditions in agriculture have got worse. Earlier problems have worsened as farm incomes have been squeezed...

-The Hindu Where the citizen-government gap is bridged by using the RTI Act for administrative reforms April 18, 2014 is a day the shepherds around Budgam town near Srinagar will not forget. This was the day when Tosa Maidan — a vast pasture that shepherds from seven districts traditionally grazed their livestock in — was reclaimed from the Indian Army. Leased out to the Army in 1964, Tosa Maidan or ‘the king of...

-The Times of India BAREILLY (U.P.): After a Bareilly-based activist filed a complaint with National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) that there are nearly 2 lakh malnutrition children in the state and the government is not taking appropriate steps in the matter, the commission has directed UP chief secretary to take appropriate action in the matter and submit an action-taken report in four weeks. Rajesh Chaudhary, a Bareilly-based activist, had lodged a complaint...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The National Human Rights Commission has sent a notice to the Maharashtra government following media reports that its education department has decided to close down zila parishad schools with fewer than 10 students and shift them to nearby institutes. The NHRC, in a recent directive, gave the state government four weeks to submit a detailed report. It said the decision, likely to affect about 1,300 schools, according to the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The National Human Rights Commission has called the Uttar Pradesh police "an organised gang of criminals", quoting a half-century-old Allahabad High Court observation, while hearing charges of wrongful detention, sexual assault, false implication and cover-up against the cops. "There is not a single lawless group in the whole of the country whose record of crime comes anywhere near the record of that single organised unit which is known...