-The Telegraph Thiruvananthapuram: The Centre's move to implement an ecology panel's report on conservation of the Western Ghats has provoked a call for a 48-hour civil disobedience agitation by the Catholic Church in Kerala, starting Sunday midnight. The Church claims the K. Kasturirangan report, notified on Wednesday, will hit the livelihoods of farmers living in the "high ranges" - foothill areas bordering the forests - and force them to relocate. Green activists deny...
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Opinion polls: disclosures on methodology and funding by pollsters are imperative -Zia Haq
-The Hindustan Times Even if opinion polls were to be curbed, the world's largest democracy would still be an exciting place for elections and psephologists alike. Only a little less democratic. So, pollsters have balked at the Election Commission's idea of restricting pre-poll surveys. But that's not the only debate, they say. Some leading Indian pollsters are worried about losing their precious credibility because of a few rotten apples. For one, there...
More »Some good news: Farm sector likely to grow over 5%-Surojit Gupta & Sidharth
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Agricultural GDP is likely to grow by over 5% this year thanks to the most abundant rains in nearly two decades, a government thinktank has forecast. If the prediction turns out right, it could help tame food inflation, provide a much-needed boost to rural incomes and a knock-on effect on other sectors of the economy. The demand for two-wheelers, tractors and mobiles, in particular, could rise...
More »Where knowledge is poor-Krishna Kumar
-The Hindu The role of education in reducing poverty is widely recognised but our planners are yet to realise how the impoverished struggle with a learning process that is unresponsive to their needs In a society where poverty is far more common than prosperity, one would expect the implications of poverty for education to be widely recognised. What we find, instead, is that poverty is seldom mentioned directly in policy documents on...
More »12 crore first-time voters hold key to 2014 Lok Sabha polls -B Sivakumar
-The Times of India CHENNAI: Close to 12 crore youths will be eligible to vote for the first time in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. To put that in perspective, no single party garnered more than 12 crore votes in the 2009 polls, showing how significant this segment can be if all of them register to vote. In the 2009 polls, the Congress polled 11.9 crore votes, the BJP 7.8 crore, BSP...
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