-The Business Standard The Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee law allows mandis to remain in the grip of a middlemen cartel, with clear links to politicians who run the governments Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi has, in effect, told chief ministers of party-ruled states that if food inflation is to be controlled, as many items as possible must be got out of the purview of the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act. For the time...

-Down to Earth Thousands of people working under NREGS bring a 38 km stream back from the dead in Uttar Pradesh Thirty nine-year-old Ram Ishwar gave up farming to pull a rickshaw outside the railway station in Uttar Pradesh's Fatehpur town. He says scarcity of water and a resultant increase in the cost of irrigation rendered farming unprofitable. Wheat production from his 0.4 hectare (ha) farmland shrank from one tonne to half...

-The Hindu State rejects proposals for new police stations; cites financial reasons Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh): Crime against women registered an upward trend in Cyberabad this year, with nearly 400 additional cases being booked compared to the previous year. As many as 2,391 cases pertaining to crime against women were booked this year when compared to 1,914 registered last year. Of them, 1,565 cases pertained to harassment, while 334 were related to outraging of...

-PTI Taking cognisance of reports on destruction of files by officials, CIC today issued summons to Delhi Chief Secretary to present their inquiry report into the alleged incident before it and barred destruction of any record held by any GNCT department till further orders. Information Commissioner M Sridhar Acharyulu also directed the Chief Secretary D M Spolia to initiate criminal action against officials, who were found to be involved in the destructions...

-The Indian Express Section 377 reeks of the anxieties of Victorian Britain and Puritan America. In 1982, Michael Hardwick, a gay man, was having consensual sex with a male partner in his bedroom in Atlanta, Georgia. Police officer Keith Torick entered the apartment with a warrant (for public drinking) that had been invalid for three weeks. Admitted by Hardwick's housemate, he went straight to the bedroom. Seeing the men, he announced that...