-India Today Taking a leap of unconventionality, a non-profit trust in collaboration with a local puja club based in north Kolkata will worship the very first transgender Durga idol on Panchami. In the 300-year-old history of Durga Puja in Bengal, this will the first time where devotees will worship a transgender Durga idol that has been fashioned after the androgynous form of Shiva and Parvati, Ardhanarishvara. Organised by the non-profit trust, Pratyay Gender...

-The Times of India The wheels of justice, the saying goes, grind slowly but grind exceedingly fine. In the Indian context, it would be more true to say that they grind so exceedingly slowly that there can be nothing fine about the outcome. When we set out to look at instances of gross miscarriage of justice, we found several cases where people were convicted of heinous crimes and locked up for...

-The Hindu Cheap imported bags are sold as Indian to government agencies for a higher procurement price. The Union Textiles Ministry has unearthed a major racket in large-scale import of cheap jute bags from Nepal and Bangladesh by Indian manufacturers, many of whom were supplying these to government agencies after putting their own seals. The Jute Packaging Materials (Compulsory Use in Packing Commodities) Act, 1987, mandates that jute bags supplied to government agencies...

-Hindustan Times In August this year, whiteflies -- a notorious pest -- bumbled through vast tracts of Punjab’s cotton fields, destroying a sizeable chunk of the crop in the state. These insects, which slurp on juicy, tender bolls, seemed to have inflicted heavy losses, sparking a serious farm crisis in India’s agricultural powerhouse in a decade. A back-to-back drought meant farmers grew more cotton, a hardy crop that requires less water to...

-Livemint.com They believe their efforts are more about social justice than philanthropy, but these young lawyer collectives are giving back to society by choosing to represent those with little or no legal recourse When Isha Khandelwal, 25, filed a discharge application for her client before the Juvenile Justice Board in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district, she told the court staff that there were a few corrections in the previously submitted plea. A member...