-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court today cited a possible dent in national security to dismiss a public interest plea that had sought a directive to ensure that the accounts of the country's premier intelligence agencies were audited to make them accountable to Parliament. "We feel a judicial order to audit the agencies will create a dent in our functioning and security. This would lead to a dangerous situation," a bench headed by...

-The Hindu Censorship by hardline Hindu groups has grown, says Amnesty Criticising the government for using archaic laws to suppress dissent, Amnesty International, in its report for 2015-16, has included India among countries that have failed to match up to the “international standard” of freedom of expression and civil liberties. The report especially noted that over the past year, crackdown on freedom of expression by majoritarian groups linked to the government had intensified,...

-The Hindu Business Line The absence of a strong framework can hold up productivity improvements. But GEAC is better than having no regulator at all The clamour for the state to regulate (as against the Powers of the legally mandated regulatory agency), field trials of bio-technology seeds for cotton and then mustard, is truly extraordinary. It has serious long-term consequences for the economy. The challenges to the Genetic Engineering Advisory Council’s Powers to regulate the...

-The Hindu Jan Breman takes a long view of the changes he’s seen in India over half a century. Perhaps no other scholar in the social sciences has studied India’s poor and its informal economy as intensively as Jan Breman. The sheer temporal span of his research is mind-boggling. He began his study in south Gujarat 15 years after India’s Independence — in 1962. And he was in south Gujarat in...

-PTI "At the ground level, PMFBY and the Guidelines will make no difference to the farmer-as is prevalent now, the insurance premium will be deducted without the farmers' knowledge, consent and information and when there is crop loss, the same yield based assessment arbitrarily decided by patwaris will apply," Abhiyan added. Criticising the new crop insurance scheme launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Swaraj Abhiyan said it will make no difference to...