-The Hindu Agroforestry promotes productive cropping environments, prevents deforestation, protects watersheds and enables agricultural land to withstand extreme weather events Growing trees on farms is a triple-win strategy for combating simultaneously the challenges of increasing food production, mitigating greenhouse gases and adapting to climate change. It is an instrument of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), catapulted to centre-stage by President Obama's launch of the Global Alliance for CSA at the World Climate Summit on...

-Economic and Political Weekly The failure by the police to file a First Information Report is the subject of much debate but the Final Report by which a case is closed has received scant attention. This article reflects on the findings following a study of 100 Final Reports each under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code and the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The police's differential stance...

-The Hindu Traditional hierarchies are too deeply entrenched to be reversed through one single measure; they need a concerted push, backed by strong will from different segments of society, including, but not confined to, politicians The rise of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Dalit-Adivasi leaders in the political sphere is celebrated as India's "silent revolution." At the national level, this phenomenon has been especially marked since the early 1990s, leading to comments...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre has made two provisions of the Right to Education Act applicable to minority institutions despite a Supreme Court directive exempting them from the law. Armed with advice from the department of legal affairs, the HRD ministry has written to all states asking them to apply the provisions of continuous promotion of students till Class VIII and no corporal punishment to minority institutions. These institutions enjoy constitutional protection...

-AP United Nations: The highest rate of child marriage was in Bangladesh, where two-thirds of girls are married before age 18, followed by India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Nearly half of girls in South Asia marry before their 18th birthday as children in the region continue paying the price of persistent inequality, according to a Unicef report released on Thursday. The Unicef report said that child marriage is pervasive in South Asia even though...