-Economic and Political Weekly   Amendments proposed by the previous Congress-led union government to the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 had the potential of improving upon this progressive legislation. Unfortunately, with its successor pursuing different priorities, the possibility of the amendments being passed remains rather low. Kamal Nayan Choubey (kamalnayanchoubey@gmail.com) is with the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. A bill for an amendment to the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas)...

-Down to Earth Madhya Pradesh's order to destroy crops cultivated using sewage has triggered a debate over the age old practice of using wastewater for irrigation RESIDENTS OF Kararia, Barkhera, Pathani and Shahpur villages in Madhya Pradesh's capital district Bhopal will soon lose the vegetables they have been growing. The loss will not be due to some disease or untimely rain. The plants will be destroyed by the government because sewage water...

-The Times of India BHOPAL: Next year on Independence Day, India will have the world's largest 750MW solar power plant in Rewa district of Madhya Pradesh, which will pip America's much-vaunted 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight solar project in California, commissioned four days ago. Acquisition of 1,500 hectares of land for the Rs 4000 crore project is close to completion and government agencies are likely to invite tenders from developers by April. The state...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India's plans to expand solar energy 30-fold to 100,000MW in seven years could create more than a million new jobs but demand chunks of land cumulatively larger than the metro areas of Calcutta or Delhi, an environment think-tank has said. An analysis by the Delhi-based Council on Energy Environment and Water has suggested that the plan to raise installed solar energy capacity from the current 3,000MW to 100,000MW...

-The Hindustan Times Bengaluru: A report released by the Catholic Secular Forum has documented 120 attacks on Christians and their institutions across India in 2014. The report, which was made available to HT, lists five murders across India in little over a year. Madhya Pradesh (23) and Chhattisgarh (19), both BJP-ruled states, along with Congress-ruled Karnataka (14) account for nearly half of all incidents across India. Between December 2013 and December 2014, 7,000...