-The Hindu Mumbai: Two young women were arrested here on Monday on charges of “promoting enmity between classes” and “sending offensive messages through [a] communication service,” after one posted, and the other ‘liked,’ a message on Facebook on Sunday, questioning the Mumbai bandh that followed Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray’s death. Both of them were released on bail by a local court on Monday afternoon. “With all respect, every day, thousands of...

-Agence France-Presse Nekpur: With both hands holding the basket of human excrement on her head, widowed grandmother Kela walks through a stream of sewage, up a mound of waste and then dumps the filth while cursing. "Nobody even pays us a decent wage!" she spits as she rakes mud and rubbish over her newly deposited pile, one of several she drops in the course of her working day cleaning toilets as a...

-The Hindu The trials and tribulations of Ashok Khemka and Sanjiv Chaturvedi expose Haryana’s intolerance of upright bureaucrats When Haryana’s top land registration official, Ashok Khemka, decided to probe Robert Vadra’s land deals in the State, he perhaps never anticipated the kind of animosity that his actions against Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law would generate within the government. Or, maybe he did, but went ahead nevertheless, hoping that a proactive media would...

-The Business Standard Deconstructing the numbers shows companies have bid smartly to get the best deals The recently concluded sale of 1,800-MHz spectrum through auction to telecom service operators, or telcos, has been declared a damp squib for two reasons: One, only five telcos participated in the auction; and two, the bids added up to Rs 9,407 crore, which was less than a third of the Rs 30,000 crore the government had...

-The Times of India How can a right given under one Act be a criminal offence under another, members of a Parliamentary standing committee have asked officials from the Union environment ministry, raising concern about conflict between the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, and the Indian Forest Act (IFA), 1927. The House panel on science and technology and environment and forests headed by T Subbarami Reddy of Congress was gathering evidence on...