Natives of Niyamgiri feel that the police is acting as an agent of the Vedanta group, playing dirty tricks to help the company go ahead with its plans to mine bauxite from the sacred hills ONE OF the world’s most controversial mines is back in the spotlight after hundreds protested against renewed efforts to mine Odisha’s Niyamgiri Hills. Dongria Kondh and Niyamgiri supporters held their own ‘public hearing’ in Odisha...

-Live Mint At a time when India plans a multi-pronged attack on malnutrition in 200 high-burden districts, it will pay to examine the cracks in state institutions that have led to past failures and can still derail well-intentioned plans. Melghat, a tribal corner in the northeastern fringes of India’s richest state—Maharashtra—is an apt example of almost everything that has gone wrong in India’s response to malnutrition and child deaths. Every 14th child dies...

-The Telegraph Indian women living in Canada are more likely to have male babies during their second or third deliveries, according to a new study that hints Indians may have carried the malaise of female foeticide to Canada. Researchers in Canada have found that the male-female ratio of babies born to women from India who already have children is significantly higher than the ratio observed among women from other countries, including Pakistan. Their...

On Thursday, April 12, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the provision in the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act — better known as the Right to Education or RTE Act — that makes it compulsory for private schools (including schools that have received no cheap land, one-time subsidy or contribution to ongoing expenses from a government agency) to take in 25% pupils from poor-income backgrounds. It...

In what the CBI says could be the “tip of an iceberg”, the agency has found at least 1,100 cases of allegedly fraudulent refund checks issued by the Income Tax department that has resulted in the illegal withdrawal of more than Rs 6 crore over the last three months. The CBI has arrested two persons, including an accountant: Pankaj Kumar Gupta and Amit Kumar Sharma. Both, allegedly in league with IT...