-TheWire.in Democracy cannot be held PRIsoner to random sampling, especially when the EC won’t tell us what happens if a discrepancy between EVM tally and VVPAT slips is detected. “Check one grain of rice, and you will know if the whole vessel of rice is cooked.” This is an analogy that is often used to show that a small sample is enough to be sure of the result. But what happens if...

-The Hindu ‘It’s not just trolling, it’s an abuse of human rights’ New Delhi: Launching a crowd-sourced study on the abuse that Indian women politicians face on Twitter, Amnesty India says online trolling aimed at threatening and silencing them must be considered a human rights violation. “It’s so easy for men to dismiss it as just ‘trolling’, but we are talking about rape threats, death threats, stalking…words which can lead to deep physical...

  Initial media reports suggest how timely interventions by various official agencies in Odisha prevented loss of human lives when Cyclone Fani hit that state on 3rd May. However, it is essential to also take into account recent official reports by different agencies, which indicate that the impact of the cyclone has been quite severe. A situation assessment report on the impact of Fani cyclone dated 15th May, 2019, which was released...

-The Hindu 35 lakh poultry birds killed in Odisha The initial estimate of Cyclone Fani’s damage to standing crops in Odisha has been pegged at Rs. 150 crore, but the State Agriculture Department warns that the destruction of storage facilities and harvested crops stored in the open could further spike those losses. Low insurance penetration could also exacerbate farmers’ losses, especially in the poultry sector. “Because of the advance warning, it was possible to...

-The Hindu It had sued them for Rs. 20 lakh PepsiCo has applied to withdraw its cases against two brothers who are major potato farmers and traders in the Banaskantha district of Gujarat. This is the first concrete move taken by the company to back down from its cases against at least nine potato farmers who grew its protected variety used to make Lays chips. PepsiCo’s lawyer filed the application in a Deesa court...