-The Indian Express Bill Gates’s claim that it raises no privacy concerns is misleading. Crucial issues that have to do with confidentiality of data and state surveillance are at stake. According to Bill Gates, privacy is not a concern with Aadhaar (‘Aadhaar doesn’t pose any privacy issue, says Bill Gates’, IE, May 3). This widely-quoted statement would have been more convincing if Gates had shown a clear understanding of the Aadhaar project....

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre has finally scrapped its controversial notification on a ban on sale of animals for slaughter in livestock markets and come out with new draft rules doing away with the clause on “restrictions on sale of cattle”. This means cattle, including cows, can be sold in animal markets, even for slaughter wherever it is legal. Last year’s notification had not prohibited slaughter as such, but...

-TheWire.in Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won’t materialize. On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India – specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the...

-The Indian Express Two loan defaults lead to two different outcomes, year upon year, a nightmare version of déjà vu. The former exits the country; the latter exits the mortal world. Liquor baron Vijay Mallya and diamond jeweler Nirav Modi could jointly run a crash course for the debt-ridden and beleaguered farmers of Vidarbha, nay the entire country: How to stay cool with unpaid debts. Mallya could tell the peasantry, for instance, how...

-The Hindu A Supreme Court Bench will decide whether the law has to be interpreted expansively or in a narrow sense In July 2011, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government embarked on an ambitious project to rewrite the law on land acquisition. How the government acquired land from private parties had long been the subject of heated dispute, often resulting in violent conflict. Several previous governments had made attempts to amend the Land...