-The Telegraph Union food minister K.V. Thomas today claimed the Bengal government had distributed only a small fraction of foodgrain specially allotted last year for 10 backward districts, drawing a sharp rebuttal from the state, as another confrontation with the Centre unfolded over figures. Thomas’s comment came days after Union home minister P. Chidambaram had voiced concern over Bengal’s “culture of violence” and cited casualty figures that were contested by the Mamata...

Census 2011 data bring into the open Maharashtra’s terrible record in sex-selective abortions. In early June, Vijaymala Patekar, a mother of four girls, haemorrhaged to death at a hospital in Parli, Beed district, Maharashtra. She was reportedly in her second trimester of pregnancy. Her family had allegedly forced her to abort the foetus when they learnt it was a girl child. Sudam Munde, the doctor who performed the procedure, fled Parli but...

-The Hindustan Times Condemning the Attack on RTI activist Akhil Gogoi, the National Campaign for Peoples Right to Information (NCPRI) on Monday asked the Assam government to immediately disclose the Central government’s report on tackling floods in the state. Gagoi, who is also general secretary of the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), was assaulted while he was surveying the flood situation in Punni village, Dharmapur area of Assam and is currently in...

The NAC lies defanged; the markets leap for joy at Manmohan’s & Co’s charge of a ‘new’ economy How swiftly things change. Just a month ago, the great Indian growth story was being written off. Now, the “new economy”, run by the PM-cum-FM, will sift through the rubble of under-seven per cent growth, find the hidden springs of recovery and throw in some reforms for good measure. A top taxman says...

-The Times of India The Attack on three environment and RTI activists across the country in less than two weeks has brought to the fore how environmentalism is a dirty and sometimes violent game in the hinterland unlike the soft, candle-lighting tiger-loving green activism in big cities.  Akhil Gogoi in Assam, Bharat Jhunjhunwala in Uttarakhand and Ramesh Agrawal in Chhattisgarh - green activists who used RTI to their advantage - were Attacked...