-The Hindu The Gujarat snooping incident should be used as an opportunity to ask how the government has assumed the power to order such invasive, unchecked surveillance. On November 15, a pair of investigative portals released a set of audio transcripts depicting an extraordinarily invasive and scrupulous surveillance of a young woman by the Gujarat Police. Its implications, limited as they may appear to those who consider privacy a besmirched value, in...

-The Indian Express For several decades now, the Indian government and a variety of donor agencies have promoted and implemented "livelihoods projects". These projects depend upon women's self-help groups, or SHGs, to raise living standards - particularly of the 25 crore rural poor. In 2011, the Indian government launched the Rs 38,000 crore National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), also known as Ajeevika (reportedly now being merged with the Mahatma Gandhi National...

-The Hindustan Times The country's intelligence agencies are out to scuttle a law that's being drafted to protect your privacy. The Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing have told the government to water down the proposed law that makes it a crime to leak sensitive personal information collected by government departments and the private sector. The agencies conveyed their views to national security adviser Shivshankar Menon at a recent meeting at...

-IANS BHUBANESWAR: Odisha has asked the collectors of 14 districts to be on high alert as a depression formed over the Bay of Bengal could intensify into a cyclonic storm and hit the state coast, officials said on Wednesday. The government has directed the collectors of cyclone prone districts, including the coastal districts of Balasore, Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapada, Bhadrak, Puri and Ganjam, not to take the warning lightly and asked them to...

-Kafila.org This fact-finding exercise was coordinated by the CENTRE FOR POLICY ANALYSIS. Team members were the human rights activist and former civil servant Harsh Mander; former Director-General of the Border Security Force, E N Rammohan; Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University; National Integration Council member John Dayal; senior journalist Sukumar Muralidharan and CPA Director and senior editor Seema Mustafa. Introduction and Overview The first impression of the Muzaffarnagar countryside, now green...