-The Indian Express The bullet train project, kicked off after discussions between PM Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe, is being built with a Rs 88,000-crore soft loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Mumbai: EARLY this month, Raghunath Sutar (32), a Warli tribal from Dahanu taluka in Palghar district, was at the office of the district collector when his neighbours in Sakhare village sent him WhatsApp messages and...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the country would not be a "civilised society" if the "Damocles sword of arrest" hangs on a citizen constantly, as it prima facie defended its judgment ruling out immediate and mandatory arrest of a person charged under the SC-ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. A bench of Justices A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit, which briefly heard the Centre's petition seeking a recall of...

-The Indian Express Government must be circumspect about Cauvery dispute resolution mechanism. The government has been wise in not pressing the panic button on the Cauvery. In fact, the concept of a Cauvery Board is a flawed one. Lawyers normally have a limited understanding of water issues. We have a lot of experience in India of tribunals delaying projects for decades. Some experts have suggested highly centralised systems of dispute resolution...

-TheWire.in Figures highlighted in an RTI reply cut to the heart of a debate over the government’s assertion to count Mudra loan beneficiaries as employed. New Delhi: Struggling to deliver on the poll promise to create one crore jobs a year, the Narendra Modi government and the BJP may have found a face-saver in the flagship self-employment Mudra scheme, launched under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) in 2015. However, three years in,...

-PTI Aruna Roy also feels that there is still a need to see the RTI as a larger democratic and people's constitutional tool to make Power truthful and accountable and put pressure on the political establishment, which it cannot ignore or distort. New Delhi: There is a necessity for a whistleblowers act to protect RTI users as the system has “strategised to stall” free flow of information to disemPower and stop such...