-The Hindu The sense of impunity that drives discrimination against Dalits is at the heart of recent demands for the dilution, or even repeal, of the Act for prevention of atrocities against SCs and STs It is the sense of impunity nurtured by caste hierarchy that prepares the social ground for the “shockingly cruel and inhumane” crimes against Dalits called atrocities. It is this impunity that the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled...

-The Indian Express The Centre is pushing and many states are implementing Direct Benefit Transfers – and encountering little political opposition The entire focus on ushering in a direct benefit transfer (DBT) regime for delivering subsidies to the targeted populations has so far centered around cooking gas, and to some extent, on isolated pilot experiments with food subsidy. Agriculture subsidies, especially on inputs other than fertilisers, have largely escaped attention in...

-Livemint.com The trends are perplexing since crop acreages till last week rose by an impressive 3.7 million hectares from the year ago The latest monthly bulletin from the ministry of chemicals and fertilizers has a curious table on Kharif season fertilizer sales till August. The data shows that except MoP (muriate of potash), sales of other major fertilizers fell from the year-ago period, deepening the mystery about agriculture inputs sales trends...

-The Indian Express The clause lists cases where users are exempted from copyright infringement and includes teachers and students “in the course of the activities of an educational institution”. Copyright is not absolute and nor should it be, according to the Delhi High Court. Last week, the court ruled against five prominent academic publishing houses including Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor & Francis, allowing Rameshwari Photocopy Services (based in...

-PTI Mumbai: The Centre will make a slew of provisions for Divyang students in the upcoming education policy and has already asked schools to provide adequate facilities to them, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Saturday. “We will make a lot of provisions for Divyang students across the country in our upcoming new education policy. We have asked the management of schools to provide ramps in buildings, make available separate toilets for...