-The Times of India DAKSHIN BARASAT (South 24-Parganas): Every other house in this part of Bengal has a rags-to-riches-to-rags story. Saradha Group showed them a dream that was unbelievable when it lasted. But then reality struck a hard, bitter blow. Sixty-year-old Dulal Chandra Gharami walked back home tense on Monday afternoon. He was summoned to the Trinamool Congress office at Beliadanga, where he was asked to cough up protection money. For last four...

-The Telegraph Ranchi: State information & technology (IT) department will henceforth act as the nodal agency-cum-registrar for implementing the ambitious Aadhaar project, taking over from two state departments in an effort to speed up enrolments in Jharkhand to complete the work by December. "This decision has been taken to ensure that a single department is able to take a concerted effort to complete the project. Earlier, registration and issuance of cards were...

-Frontline PESA, which is seen as an enabling law for tribal self-governance, is violated brazenly by both the Union government and State governments in the name of development. SINCE October 2012, the Ministry of Rural Development of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has apparently been engaged in an exercise to evolve a "National Land Reforms Policy". Over these months, the Ministry wrote to various State governments, highlighting the importance of...

-The Wall Street Journal Blog The world's poorest people are now concentrated most heavily in Sub-Saharan Africa after China's huge leap in pulling its citizens out of extreme poverty in recent decades, according to new estimates released Wednesday by the World Bank. About 1.2 billion people in the world lived in extreme poverty in 2010, subsisting on less than $1.25 a day. That's down from 1.9 billion three decades ago despite a...

-The Guardian Land rights not just issue for developing world as report shows public subsidies help a few firms 'grab' vast tracts of EU land Vast tracts of land in Europe are being "grabbed" by large companies, speculators, wealthy foreign buyers and pension funds in a similar way to in developing countries, according to a major new report. Chinese corporations, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth and hedge funds, as well as Russian oligarchs and...