-The Telegraph Ranchi: The state will slash the proposed number of security camps at Saranda, indicating a welcome wane in maoist presence and influence in Asia's largest sal reserve, but the health of the showpiece action plan for 55 forest villages is open to question two years after its launch. Around the start of the Rs 249-crore Saranda Action Plan in December 2011, soon renamed to Saranda Development Plan, 24 security camps...

-The Hindu For the first time in decades, the maoists have encouraged calibrated polling in some areas, instead of fanatically implementing a policy to boycott the election The districts of Chhattisgarh partially controlled by maoists - with 12 Assembly constituencies - voted overwhelmingly in 2013. Compared to 2008, voter turnout in 2013 increased by 9.67 percentage points in 12 constituencies, while the overall polling was 6.81 percentage points higher than in the...

-Survival International Anthropologist Dr. Felix Padel works with the tribes of Odisha in eastern India, including the Dongria Kondh, for whom Survival International has campaigned for 10 years. Felix is the great great grandson of Charles Darwin and lives in a remote village in Odisha. In this interview, he talks to Survival about the Dongria Kondh's relationship to their mountains, their heroic struggle against Vedanta, Darwin's evolution theory and the experience...

-The Business Standard Intrastate inequality can only be corrected through reform of budgetary allocation formulae between districts within states The hoopla surrounding election results in India is reminiscent of nothing so much as a horse race ("...and X romps home the winner!"). The difference is that for the horse and its handlers, the work is done when the race is over. For the winners in the recent round of state elections,...

-Live Mint Eight journalists were killed in 2013 while covering stories, six of them during the Muzaffarnagar riots New Delhi: More journalists were killed and attempts to censor the media increased across the country this year, said a report titled ‘Free Speech in India 2013' from the media affairs website, the Hoot. Eight journalists were killed in 2013 while covering stories, six of them during the August-September Muzaffarnagar riots in Uttar Pradesh....