-The Hindu Govt. accused of backtracking on promise of loan waiver Mumbai: Farmers in Maharashtra are using the phrase bure din (bad days) to describe their condition. Akshay Tale last spoke to his close friend Neelesh Walke at around 2.45 p.m. on December 30 last year. Neelesh, who faced a Rs. 2 lakh debt, seemed anxious but showed no signs that he was considering any extreme step. At around 4 p.m., Neelesh, barely 23,...

-IANS CHANDIGARH: They have been warned, threatened with prosecution and even offered inducements. But a number of farmers in Punjab and Haryana seem disinclined to stop their environment-unfriendly bi-annual exercise of burning crop residue, cited by environmentalists as one of the prinicipal causes of dust haze and air pollution in Delhi and northern India. With the wheat harvest in both the states nearly over, authorities are attempting in whatever they can to...

-The Hindu As the proposed amendments to the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000, passed in the Lok Sabha on May 7, faces the Rajya Sabha hurdle, several child rights experts have begun to challenge its premise for treating adolescents accused of heinous crimes on a par with adults. Their primary contention is that the basis for proposing such amendments for stringent action is flawed and unlikely to act as a deterrent. Victim, not...

-The Indian Express Mumbai: Despite MGNREGA’s rich possibilities, Kumar notes that the Maharashtra government has slashed allocations under it to Rs 800 crore in 2014-15. Even as it stares at unprecedented crop loss from back-to-back droughts followed by untimely rains/hailstorms, Maharashtra has seemingly given the short shrift to MGNREGA, which could have gone some way in mitigating the current crisis. And significantly, its potential has been least leveraged in Vidarbha, the region...

-NDTV Mumbai: Congress President Sonia Gandhi today sharply attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government in Parliament and outside. In a statement in the Lok Sabha, Mrs Gandhi criticized what she called the "deplorable lapse" in not filling key posts, including that of the Chief Information Commissioner, which has been vacant for eight months. Stating that over 39,000 appeals under the RTI or Right to Information Act, remain pending, she also used...