The newly released Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round) establishes the fact that the farm households are more and more relying on wage incomes instead of 'net incomes from crop cultivation' for their livelihoods. In Marxian lexicon, proletarisation (a term that we can loosely use for depeasantisation) refers to the process in which the farmers/ tillers are...

-The Hindu It expresses shock at denial of justice to father of encounter victim for 19 years In a shocking case of the State virtually supporting an extrajudicial killing, the Supreme Court has condemned the Uttar Pradesh government for screening police officers accused in an encounter death even as the victim’s father was made to run from pillar to post for justice for 19 long years. A Bench led by Justice Vineet Saran...

-NDTV.com Six cops were suspended on Tuesday night and a murder case has been filed against four of them earlier after nationwide outrage over the incident. Lucknow: A widely shared video on social media shows top officials in Uttar Pradesh's Gorakhpur allegedly trying to dissuade the family of businessman Manish Gupta, who died during a late-night police raid at a city hotel on Monday, from filing a police case in the matter. Six...

-Networkideas.org  The International Monetary Fund has announced a fresh issue of $650 billion Special Drawing Rights in August which would be distributed among member countries in proportion to their IMF quotas. This amount is less than what had been demanded by many, which was a trillion dollars, but it does represent a small temporary comfort for the heavily indebted third world countries. Almost all of it will go into the pockets of...

-The Hindu With children out of school, rural Karnataka is reviving free libraries and creating new ones — with book racks, furniture, posters, work tables and computers I love libraries. I love everything about them — the hush, the slowly spinning blades of the ceiling fan, the sunlight spilling in from tall windows, the magazines lying open on polished wooden tables, the readers slumped over books, taking notes, the rows and endless...