-The Hindu   Last week's jail sentence for two prominent Shiv Sainiks is historic as it upholds the first such conviction against a member of that party Sent to jail for two months and fined Rs.5,000. Twenty years after their crime, this was the sentence handed down last week by a sessions court to two Shiv Sena leaders. This was for their provocative speeches during the Mumbai riots following the demolition of the...

-IPS News India's planners worry about ‘jobless growth', but perhaps nothing illustrates this phenomenon better than a policy of handing over the collection and disposal of the capital's refuse to large private corporations, leaving close to 50,000 ragpickers unemployed. For decades ragpickers provided a service to this city, scavenging waste for recyclable plastic, aluminium, glass and other materials, and earning a livelihood by selling their pickings to contractors with equipment to process...

-Frontline   But in Modi's Gujarat the difference between development and darkness is all too visible to those who care to see. NARENDRA MODI may have won three consecutive elections and ruled Gujarat for more than a decade after he was posted there almost as a night watchman, to borrow a cricketing expression. He may have mobilised a massive fan following that is shouting to catapult him into the Prime Minister's post,...

-The Hindu     The mistaken notion that the 53 per cent of India's population ‘dependent on agriculture' are all ‘farmers' leads many to dismiss the massive farmers' suicides as trivial There are nearly 15 million farmers (‘Main' cultivators) fewer than there were in 1991. Over 7.7 million less since 2001, as the latest Census data show. On average, that's about 2,035 farmers losing ‘Main Cultivator' status every single day for the last 20...

-The Hindu   Union Cabinet gives nod for Street Vendors Bill which will see certificates being issued to at least one crore hawkers across the country On Labour Day, the Union Cabinet announced a bonanza for street vendors - an end to ‘licence raj' - by giving its consent to the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Bill, 2013. The Bill which is aimed at regulating street vending and shielding...