-The Hindu Reservation on the basis of religion has always raised serious constitutional concerns and a recent ruling of the Andhra Pradesh High Court (which the Supreme Court refused to stay) declaring the sub-quota for minorities unconstitutional only illustrates this constitutional tension. This is not the first time that the Andhra Pradesh High Court has declared reservation for religious minorities constitutionally invalid. In 2005, a five-judge-bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court...

Bengal is staring at the possibility of losing self-sufficiency in rice unless the state manages to reverse a declining trend and step up production by as much as 12 per cent over the next four years. Lack of self-sufficiency in grain production need not necessarily be an alarming factor for a modern economy. But such a status is looming over Bengal in spite of factories not mushrooming on farmland — the...

-The Hindu Witnesses who have testified against Janardhan Reddy and his men fear the mining baron's release from jail A torrent of calls flooded the CBI unit in Bangalore when T. Pattabhi Ramarao, the CBI judge in distant Hyderabad, granted bail to the jailed mining baron, G. Janardhan Reddy, on May 11. Many of the frantic calls were from the 300-plus witnesses painstakingly persuaded by the CBI-Bangalore to testify in the case registered...

-Down to Earth Traders say Food Safety and Standards Act rolls out red carpet for multinationals The Food Safety and Standards Act (FSSA) of 2006 has not gone down well with food business operators. They say sections of the Act dealing with licensing, registration, hygiene standards, penalty provisions and powers of food safety inspectors are “draconian”. FSSA, which came into force in August last year, replaces the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act (PFA)...

-Live Mint To maintain his constant stream of RTI petitions, Agrawal says he gets ideas from day-to-day observations, news reports, government insiders, whistle-blowers and journalists. In the summer of 1985, a cloth merchant in Chandni Chowk, the crowded market in the old quarters of Delhi, received a call in response to a letter he had written to the papers asking why his favourite weekly television serial, Rajani, could not be aired daily...