-The Telegraph They also torched the office of a weigh bridge and damaged it, pelted stones and blocked roads, demanding that all should get adequate bonds to store their produce Jalpaiguri: Violence sparked in three locations on the outskirts of Jalpaiguri town, on Thursday as hundreds of potato farmers, who crowded in front of cold storages to collect bonds to store their produce, resorted to protests after alleging anomalies in the distribution...

-Down to Earth The Kala Talab has Been filled with fly ash and soil to build residential colonies in the east Rajasthan city on the Chambal, resulting in crocodile deaths Some 50 mugger crocodiles have died in the last one month in a prominent waterbody of Rajasthan’s Kota city as a result of it being filled up for developmental activities, locals and wildlife activists have alleged. The Kala Talab (‘black pool’) is connected...

In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...

-Frontline.in A Parliamentary Standing Committee pulls up the Rural Development Ministry in its report on a “critical evaluation” of the MGNREGA and calls for more investment in the scheme. A Parliamentary Standing Committee report of the Ministry of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, tabled in February, strongly recommends enhancing the budget for implementation of work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, higher wage rates, and increasing the number...

-Newsclick.in Prison occupancy in India has Been on the rise over the past five years with overcrowded jails struggling to cater to the needs of prisoners. Experts point to the mass incarceration of pre-trial prisoners. Following an increase in prison overcrowding in India, critics are calling for new reforms to the judicial process, to decrease the length of trials and reduce the number of inmates. Three out of every four people held in...