-The Hindu Business Line Nine years after a landmark law empowering local communities, thousands of forest villages across India struggle to regain their traditional rights over resources and livelihoods Sundar Singh Rabha always carries a certain file folder. He holds it against himself in a hot tin car as it jangles along forest roads towards village Shalkumar, in a northern corner of West Bengal. His phone rings without respite. Every few minutes,...

-Hard News They know little of the taste of meat. For their monotonous daily food they have nothing but a little khichri, made of ‘green pulse’ mixed with rice, which is cooked with water over a little fire until the moisture has evaporated, and eaten hot with butter in the evening; in the daytime they munch a little parched pulse or other grain, which they say suffices for their lean stomachs,”...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that it would soon join hands with West Bengal, Karnataka, Assam and Tamil Nadu to seek review of its May 13 judgment banning photos of political leaders, except President, prime minister and Chief Justice of India, in government advertisements. In an affidavit filed before the court denying any violation of the May 13 judgment, the information and broadcasting...

-The Indian Express There are certain issues, however, which need be addressed, to make sure that the information commission becomes fully autonomous and thus becomes a constitutional body. Celebrations for 10 years of democratic transparency, in the form of the Right to Information Act, are going on. What we have achieved as yet and what is still someway to go needs to be found out. The many scams, which have successfully helped...

-The Indian Express Scapegoating ‘hoarders’ and ‘speculators’ for the spike in dal prices might have been effective in the 1960s. But today, it is only evidence of a rather sloppy conceptual policy framework. The pulse rate of a normal and healthy human body hovers between 60 and 100 beats per minute. There can be problems if it goes any higher — and a serious threat to life over 200 beats per...