-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre today said it was "considering" two new penal code provisions to punish racial discrimination and racial insults, recommended by a panel as a safeguard for people from the Northeast living elsewhere in the country. Home minister Rajnath Singh announced a slew of other measures too for migrants from the region while signalling acceptance of the M.P. Bezbaruah committee's recommendations. Officials clarified that the proposed Sections 153C...

Animals, which are used for food, fibre, labour etc. hold a special place in ensuring rural livelihoods. It has been found by the NSSO's 70th Round Report that among the agricultural households having less than 0.01 hectare land (which includes landless agricultural households too), a little above 1/5th reported livestock as their principal source of income whereas 56.4% depended on wage/ salaried employment. However, as the land size went up,...

Child sex ratio (CSR) in India has declined from 927 in 2001 to 918 in 2011 (girls per 1,000 boys), according to a new report entitled Missing Girls: Mapping the Adverse Child Sex Ratio in India (Census 2011). Of the total 640 districts in the country, 429 districts have experienced decline in CSR (see the link below).   Of these 429 districts, 26 districts exhibited drastic decline (of 50 points or more),...

-The Telegraph Calcutta: Private companies will be able to buy farm produce directly from farmers in Bengal. But the widely-anticipated whoop of exultation from Indian industry over the amendment in the state's agri-marketing act was somewhat muted because of the lack of clarity on the issue of contract farming and the absence of clear guidelines on whether the state government would provide incentives and help in the acquisition of land for private...

-The Telegraph Guwahati: Apart from Tripura and Sikkim, enrolment for Aadhaar cards remains very low in the northeastern states, with Assam at the bottom of the list. According to figures available with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which handles the Aadhaar project, as on November 30, 2014, the percentage of enrolment against the total population was abysmally low in Assam - 0.3 per cent. The trend is not much better in...