-The Indian Express Socio-Economic and Caste Census can help identify welfare beneficiaries without falling into a binary trap. The release earlier this month of the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) has been followed by much media analysis. Some have expressed scepticism about what it shows and others have treated it as yet another set of numbers on how many are poor in India. It has also been variously hailed as revolutionising benefit...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: The Right to Information (RTI) is turning into an increasingly opaque idea as more posts of the information commissioner are falling vacant. Vacancies for the post in the country increased from 14% in 2014 to 20% in 2015, reveals a nation-wide study conducted by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), an NGO. According to the report, the number of information commissioners in the country has been reduced from 120...

-The Hindu The apex court, however, permitted the use of photographs of the President, Prime Minister and CJI in the advertisements. In a historic judgment holding that taxpayers' money cannot be spent to build "personality cults" of political leaders, the Supreme Court on Wednesday restrained ruling parties from publishing photographs of political leaders or prominent persons in government-funded advertisements. The apex court said such photos divert attention from the policy of the government,...

A recent press release from the Ministry of Agriculture shows that the area affected by recent rains and hailstorms is estimated to be 189.81 lakh hectares (on 24 April 2015), which is nearly double the total area affected that was earlier estimated on 16 April 2015. (See the link below). Experts argue that such extreme weather events may severely damage food economy of the nation, apart from breaking the spirit...

-The Times of India As successive spells of freak rains in March-April ravaged fields across Uttar Pradesh, a spate of farmer deaths were reported. Most of these were ascribed to suicide or trauma, as crop losses mounted and the state appeared to be reeling under a fresh agrarian crisis. The UP government moved to provide relief, but on farmer deaths, it saw things a little differently. "There is no conclusive proof, yet,...