-The Hindu     The draft policy on the use of forest land is at odds with sound conservation principles and fails to plug holes in current guidelines that work to the advantage of project promoters The Supreme Court in July 2011 while delivering the Lafarge Judgment laid down guidelines on forest clearance procedures. These were to operate till a new regulatory mechanism was put in place. Two years after the judgment, the Ministry...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) was supposed to be a game-changer ahead of the 2014 general elections, with the government planning to plug leakages by Transferring cash directly into the accounts of beneficiaries and hoping to cash in on their goodwill. But eight months down the line, it is discovering that the grand plan has run into bureaucratic walls and the beneficiaries are not ready to...

-The Telegraph Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government today announced a scheme to allow big private investors to directly procure farm produce - a segment that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee could not liberate from the stranglehold of the Forward Bloc. The scheme titled Brihat Krishak Bazar Yojana, which loosely translates into mega farmer market programme, seeks to "connect the local market to high-growth demand centres" and weed out middlemen. The project will allow private developers to...

-The Hindu     Young offenders above a certain age who commit violent crimes should be prosecuted as adults On August 31, 2013, the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) ordered that the boy who raped Nirbhaya, brutalised her with an iron rod, pulled out her intestines and then cleaned up the bus and made tea would go virtually free by sentencing him to only 28 months in a remand home as eight months of the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Among children up to 15 years old, there are 1.8 crore fewer girls than boys - the sex ratio at 914 girls per 1,000 boys remaining the same as a decade ago. This is the chilling picture of the fate of girls emerging from age-wise data of India's population in 2011 released by census authorities on Friday. The data gives population for each succeeding age year,...