-Rediff.com Potshangbam Devakanta from Manipur shows the way in conserving the biodiversity of the state, farming around 100 traditional varieties of paddy and rare medicinal plants, finds Manu A B/Rediff.com. When farmers across India are grappling with weather woes and poor yields, Potshangbam Devakanta from Manipur has succeeded in adopting smart and eco-friendly methods of farming to ensure his harvest is satisfactory year after year. Like thousands of farmers in India, 60-year-old Devakanta...

-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...

-The Hindu Though outlawed in 1976, bonded labour lives and thrives in the State, as highlighted by the Sivaji Ganesan committee. However, the State continues to maintain an Ostrich-like attitude, failing to conduct periodic surveys and implement rehabilitation programmes The State of Karnataka in 2000 woke up to news about a certain medieval-era brutality being committed on bonded labourers, when the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha unearthed the case of five labourers being...

-NDTV Chandigarh: Seven acres of pest-infested cotton, an old mother, two sisters and a six-lakh debt, is what Kala Singh has left behind. The 33-year-old Punjab farmer killed himself on Wednesday by drinking the same pesticide that failed to save his crop. In Bhatinda's  Burj Mehma village, his cousin Harbans Singh says Kala Singh was very hard working but could do nothing to save his entire cotton crop from being ruined by...

-Hindustan Times Ranchi: Bankers come in pint size at an urban slum in Ranchi. And they run a bank for the children, by the children and of the children. Ten-year-old Nisha Kumari has an account in the bank — Children’s Development Khazana (CDK)—which opened in 2014. And her small pleasures of childhood is not held hostage to the priorities of her poor family. “During Durga Puja last year, a few relatives had visited...