Indications are that many civilians were killed in the counterinsurgency operation In the early hours of Friday, about six hundred troopers from the Central Reserve Police Force and the Combat Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) commando unit conducted an operation in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district in which 18 tribal villagers were killed and six CRPF troopers injured. Two suspected Maoists were killed in Sukma in an unrelated incident the same day. As per the...

Ranchi: Supreme Court today dismissed a petition filed by local tribals against setting up three national institutes of higher learning on the outskirts of Ranchi, arming a hitherto defensive district administration to deal with the ongoing protests firmly. According to lawyer Rajeev Gupta, representing petitioners Mangu Oraon and others, an apex court division bench comprising Justice H.L. Gokhale and Justice Ranjana Desai observed that “it’s a 50-year old case” which the...

-The Hindu Business Line VISAKHAPATNAM: Farmers in Visakhapatnam district are being encouraged to rediscover and adopt age-old agricultural practices, give up use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and grow organic crops, according to Mr P. Ramana, district manager of Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture project. He said in an interview that the project, being implemented by the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), is meant to support poor farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices...

-The Times of India The UPA is likely to rejig the Sonia Gandh-led National Advisory Council(NAC) with four members of the government think-tank for social sector reforms — Jean Dreze, M S Swaminathan, Harsh Mander and Madhav Gadgil — being dropped at the end of their second year tenure. Dreze, an economist and one of the most prominent faces of the NAC, who had strongly advocated for a universal food security, had...

-Down to Earth World is moving towards natural capital as a measure of economic growth After using gross domestic product, or GDP, as the universal measurement of economy for six decades, the world has begun looking beyond this gold standard for measuring a country’s economy. On May 25, 10 African countries agreed to incorporate their natural capital, or value of their natural resources, into their national accounts to make better economic decisions. The...