-The Business Standard   Orissa has voiced its opposition to the caps proposed in the targeted Public Distribution System (PDS) in the National Food Security (NFS) Bill-2011. The NFS Bill has proposed a cap of 75 per cent in rural areas and 50 per cent in urban areas on the coverage under targeted PDS. The state Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, while welcoming the concept of food security, has objected to fixing limits on targeted...

-The Shillong Times   The Tripura government has targeted to achieve paddy cultivation in more than 17,000 hectares of hill land under improvised Jhuming (shifting cultivation) method in 2011-12. State’s Agriculture Minister Aghore Debbarma said here on Wednesday that, the traditional method of Jhum (Slash and burn) had been banned in the state few years ago and the government had introduced various rehabilitation packages for the hardcore Jhumias. ”Despite sincere effort and initiative for...

A report of the National People's Tribunal on the 2008 riots in Kandhamal, Orissa, is out. The report that runs into 197 pages points out that the brutality of the violence falls within the definition of 'torture' under international law, particularly the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.   According to the tribunal, headed by Justice A P Shah, communal forces used religious conversions as an issue for political mobilisation...

-PTI   India has become "less equal over time" and earningsinequality in the country has increased significantly since the early 1990s, Paris-based think tank OECD said today. The observations are a part of OECD's report focusing on inequality patterns and related policy challenges in the emerging economies of India, China, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a 34-member grouping of mostly advanced nations, that...

The scheme seeks to add a superstructure of digital empowerment without laying an adequate foundation Until recently, S. Dhibeka, 16, who had never used a computer until she chose the computer science stream last year at the aging, leafy Kakkalur Government Higher Secondary School near Chennai, could practise programming for only an hour or two a week, often sharing a desktop computer with one or more of her classmates. But since September,...