-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...

-The Hindu Business Line In an effort to reintroduce the bill seeking Amendments in the Agricultural Produce Marketing (Development and Regulation) Act, the Maharashtra government has started discussions with stakeholders, including farmers’ leaders, traders and mathadi workers (head loaders). In the first meeting recently conducted by State Revenue Minister Chandrakant Patil, farmers’ leaders and traders reached an agreement on scrapping cess on the produce brought and traded in Agriculture Produce Market Committee...

-The Hindu The Coastal Regulation Zone notification of 2018 increases the vulnerability of coastal people to climate disasters The National Democratic Alliance government has unleashed several extremely unimaginative developmental policies that target areas that have retained some degree of ecological value to turn them into sites for industrial production. This is despite evidence of the damaging effects of such policies. The latest instance of this is the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification...

-The Indian Express Justice Jeevan Reddy in the Mandal judgment held that “a backward class cannot be determined only and exclusively with reference to economic criterion. It may be a consideration or basis along with and in addition to social backwardness, but it can never be the sole criterion...” The decision of the Union Cabinet to provide reservation of 10% for “economically weaker sections of the people who are not covered...

-The Hindu The Aadhaar Bill, allowing private bodies to use Aadhaar as a means to authenticate identity, poses huge dangers On Friday, the Lok Sabha, without any attendant discussion, passed the Aadhaar and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2018. On any reasonable reading it ought to be plainly apparent that the Bill flagrantly flouts both the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s judgment which gave the Aadhaar programme a conditional imprimatur. It is...