-The Indian Express Preventive detention is being routinised as an instrument of state repression The recent preventive detention (PD) of Khurram Parvez, a Kashmiri human rights activist, and Jignesh Mewani, a Dalit leader from Gujarat, has turned the spotlight on the provision of PD and the purposes it is being made to serve. National Crime Records Bureau data released in September 2015 indicate that over 3,200 people were being held in administrative...

-The Indian Express Decentralised industrialisation, entrepreneurship from below have been absent in states that have seen recent unRest among agrarian communities. “The soil here is very saline with electrical conductivity value of 9. We can grow only chloride-loving crops like coconut and the MR-2 variety of mulberry.” That was Tamil Selvi, recently telling this correspondent about the 5.75-acre land farmed by her father Natarajan Gounder at Velayuthagoundanpudur, a small village around 25...

-The Hindu If concurrent Lok Sabha and Assembly elections were to be a reality, it would go against the political diversity essential for addressing the social diversity of India. Though spoken about for quite a few years, simultaneous elections for the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies seem to be fast on their way to becoming a matter of national concern. This proposal is not only being discussed in the television studio, but...

-The Hindu Plea against govt. order making it mandatory for scholarship schemes. The Centre was caught red-handed defying a Supreme Court order directing that no citizen will be denied benefits under a government scheme for want of an Aadhaar card. A Bench of Justices Gopala V. Gowda and A.K. Goel discovered that the Centre had been insisting that students submit their Aadhaar number for applying for government scholarship schemes. On October 15, 2015, a...

-The Indian Express The government has failed to provide the right incentives to farmers India’s quest for self-sufficiency in pulses goes back, at least, to 1990-1991, when pulses were incorporated in the technology mission on oilseeds. In 1992, and 1995-1996, oil palm and maize were added to the mission, which was re-christened the Integrated Scheme on Oilseeds, Pulses, Oil palm and Maize (ISOPOM). In 2007, ISOPOM’s pulses component was merged with...