-The Indian Express Govt officials, opposition question Mamata doles to Muslims Kolkata: Communal clashes have jumped in rural Bengal, police records show. Such incidents, annually between 12 and 40 for five years until 2012, peaked at 106 last year. Government officials fear that in an election year, the growing conflict could lead to polarisation of the electorate. West Bengal has always been considered a peaceful state in terms of communal amity. But the...

-The Business Standard Government slowness may have scuttled Aadhaar With the declaration that the chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, Nandan Nilekani, will stand as a Congress candidate in the coming Lok Sabha elections from a constituency in Bangalore, attention has once again been focused on the Aadhaar project. Aadhaar is almost at its target of enrolling 600 million people nationwide; Mr Nilekani says that the UIDAI has now got...

-The Hindu     Even a cursory look at how Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand have fared will tell us how the mere formation of a smaller State is no guarantee for better lives for those groups for whom these States have been created Smaller States have been the new political mode of addressing basic issues that were otherwise left unresolved. However, fighting for a new state and reconstructing on a more sustainable democratic content...

-The Indian Express New street vendors act is welcome. But questions of hawkers' rights come down to our understanding of city spaces and people. The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Bill, 2014, was finally passed by the Rajya Sabha on February 19 and received presidential assent last week. This is to be lauded. Since the late 19th century, the official view has been to treat street...

-The Hindustan Times Jorhat (Assam): In 2006, ten years after she started selling coconut ladoos to bail her husband out of a debt trap, Meghali Bora met Kangkaan Pegu in Majuli, a 527 sq km island in river Brahmaputra off Jorhat town 305 km east of Guwahati. The latter suffered from bipolar disorder, a manic-depressive illness marked by suicidal tendencies. Bora taught Kangkaan her conquer-adversity mantra: if your life is in a...