-PTI Medha Patkar made a strong pitch for retaining the 'Social Impact Assessment' and 'Consent' clauses of Land Acquisition Act The government was on Monday under attack from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and farmer organisations over the contentious land acquisition Bill, with activist Medha Patkar leading the protest against changes brought in the 2013 land law of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Several organisations, including National Alliance for Farmers Movement (NAFM), All India Coordination...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Anganwadi centres across the country will soon go hi-tech with the government planning to equip them with tablet PC devices installed with a customised software for regular monitoring of nutrition supply to malnourished children. The software will enable anganwadi workers (AWWs) to upload various data like dietary intake and health updates of children and supply of foodgrains and supplementary nutrition on a daily basis. The move will help the government...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: At a time when fears of another drought year are looming large, an RTI application filed by TOI has revealed that the quantity of foodgrains damaged in Food Corporation of India godowns across the country recorded a drastic jump over the last two years when the country lost more than 40,000 tonnes. Though the losses are attributed to natural calamities like cyclone and floods, experts say...

-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...

-The Indian Express A few days after the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) barred several organisations, including some top educational institutions, from receiving foreign funds, some of them hit back at the Centre on Friday saying the government made a “gross mistake” by including them in the list of NGOs receiving foreign funds. Educational institutions like IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Delhi, Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Panjab University were among those barred by the...