-The Telegraph Guwahati: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today filed his nomination papers for the May 30 Rajya Sabha election here but the visit was overshadowed by protests by journalists and the All Assam Students Union. The scribes protested against denial of access to cover the proceedings of the Prime Minister's visit in the Assembly while the AASU said Singh had "failed" Assam despite representing the state since 1991. Such was the intensity of...

-The Hindu   Investment in a scheme that guarantees rural employment with minimum wages should be seen as complementary and not alternative to development activities A recent paper by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) has argued that the "push" factors of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) are not as important as the economic growth "pull" factors, for increasing agricultural wages. The paper has received wide media...

-The Indian Express As coming-of-age rituals go, the Tritiya Sammelan Prastuti Committee (TSPC) couldn't have planned it better. Acting on intelligence by its cadre, it moved in on a group of Maoists in Chatra district's Lawalong Tola on the intervening night of March 27-28, killing 10. Among the dead was Lalesh Yadav, secretary of the Bihar-Jharkhand-North Chhattisgarh Special Area Committee, and his closest subordinates, thus leaving a vacuum at the heart...

-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 Hindu     ‘We have nothing against Fathima, but cannot make a special case for her' Guwahati: The mother of a four-year-old Muslim girl has moved the Gauhati High Court after the authorities of a Catholic Mission-run school, Kristo Jyoti School, near Bokakhat in upper Assam's Golaghat district refused to allow her daughter Fathima Beevi to wear a ‘hijab' (headscarf) along with the school uniform. The school's authorities have given the girl's parents 15...